In the past, the duties of the state, as Sir Henry Maine noted long ago, were only two in number: internal order and external security.
By prevailing over other claimants for the loyalties of men, the nation-state maintained an adequate measure of certainty and order within its territorial borders.
Outside those limits it asserted, as against other states, a position of sovereign equality, and, as against the "inferior" peoples of the non-Western world, a position of dominance.
It became the sole "subject" of "international law" (a term which, it is pertinent to remember, was coined by Bentham), a body of legal principle which by and large was made up of what Western nations could do in the world arena.
(That corpus of law was a reflection of the power system in existence during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Speaking generally, it furthered -- and still tends to further -- the interests of the Western powers.
The enormous changes in world politics have, however, thrown it into confusion, so much so that it is safe to say that all international law is now in need of reexamination and clarification in light of the social conditions of the present era.
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Beyond the two basic tasks mentioned above, no attention was paid by statesman or scholar to an idea of state responsibility, either internally or externally.
This was particularly true in the world arena, which was an anarchical battleground characterized by strife and avaricious competition for colonial empires.
That any sort of duty was owed by his nation to other nations would have astonished a nineteenth-century statesman.
His duty was to his sovereign and to his nation, and an extension to peoples beyond the territorial boundaries was not to be contemplated.
Thus, to cite but one example, the Pax Britannica of the nineteenth century, whether with the British navy ruling the seas or with the City of London ruling world finance, was strictly national in motivation, however much other nations (e.g., the United States) may have incidentally benefited.
At the same time, all suggestions that some sort of societal responsibility existed for the welfare of the people within the territorial state was strongly resisted.
Social Darwinism was able to stave off the incipient socialist movement until well into the present century.

However, in recent decades, for what doubtless are multiple reasons, an unannounced but nonetheless readily observable shift has occurred in both facets of national activity.
A concept of responsibility is in process of articulation and establishment.
Already firmly implanted internally, it is a growing factor in external matters.

A little more than twenty years ago the American people turned an important corner.
In what has aptly been called a "constitutional revolution", the basic nature of government was transformed from one essentially negative in nature (the "night-watchman state") to one with affirmative duties to perform.
The "positive state" came into existence.
For lawyers, reflecting perhaps their parochial preferences, there has been a special fascination since then in the role played by the Supreme Court in that transformation -- the manner in which its decisions altered in "the switch in time that saved nine", President Roosevelt's ill-starred but in effect victorious "Court-packing plan", the imprimatur of judicial approval that was finally placed upon social legislation.
Of greater importance, however, is the content of those programs, which have had and are having enormous consequences for the American people.
Labor relations have been transformed, income security has become a standardized feature of political platforms, and all the many facets of the American version of the welfare state have become part of the conventional wisdom.
A national consensus of near unanimity exists that these governmental efforts are desirable as well as necessary.
Ratified in the Republican Party victory in 1952, the Positive State is now evidenced by political campaigns being waged not on whether but on how much social legislation there should be.

The general acceptance of the idea of governmental (i.e., societal) responsibility for the economic well-being of the American people is surely one of the two most significant watersheds in American constitutional history.
The other, of course, was the Civil War, the conflict which a century ago insured national unity over fragmentation.
A third, one of at least equal and perhaps even greater importance, is now being traversed: American immersion and involvement in world affairs.

Internal national responsibility, now a truism, need not be documented.
Nevertheless, it may be helpful to cite one example -- that of employment -- for, as will be shown below, it cuts across both facets of the new concept.
Thirty years ago, while the nation was wallowing in economic depression, the prevailing philosophy of government was to stand aside and allow "natural forces" to operate and cure the distress.
That guiding principle of the Hoover Administration fell to the siege guns of the New Deal;
less than a score of years later Congress enacted the Employment Act of 1946, by which the national government assumed the responsibility of taking action to insure conditions of maximum employment.
Hands-off the economy was replaced by conscious guidance through planning -- the economic side of the constitutional revolution.
In 1961 the first important legislative victory of the Kennedy Administration came when the principle of national responsibility for local economic distress won out over a "state's-responsibility" proposal -- provision was made for payment for unemployment relief by nation-wide taxation rather than by a levy only on those states afflicted with manpower surplus.
The American people have indeed come a long way in the brief interval between 1930 and 1961.

Internal national responsibility is a societal response to the impact of the Industrial Revolution.
Reduced to its simplest terms, it is an assumption of a collective duty to compensate for the inability of individuals to cope with the rigors of the era.
National responsibility for individual welfare is a concept not limited to the United States or even to the Western nations.
A measure of its widespread acceptance may be derived from a statement of the International Congress of Jurists in 1959.
Meeting in New Delhi under the auspices of the International Commission of Jurists, a body of lawyers from the free world, the Congress redefined and expanded the traditional Rule of Law to include affirmative governmental duties.
It is noteworthy that the majority of the delegates to the Congress were from the less developed, former colonial nations.
The Rule of Law, historically a principle according everyone his "day in court" before an impartial tribunal, was broadened substantively by making it a responsibility of government to promote individual welfare.
Recognizing that the Rule of Law is "a dynamic concept which should be employed not only to safeguard the civil and political rights of the individual in a free society", the Congress asserted that it also included the responsibility "to establish social, economic, educational and cultural conditions under which his legitimate aspirations and dignity may be realized".
The idea of national responsibility thus has become a common feature of the nations of the non-Soviet world.
For better or for worse, we all now live in welfare states, the organizing principle of which is collective responsibility for individual well-being.

Whether a concept analogous to the principle of internal responsibility operates in a nation's external relations is less obvious and more difficult to establish.
The hypothesis ventured here is that it does, and that evidence is accumulating validating that proposition.
The content is not the same, however: rather than individual security, it is the security and continuing existence of an "ideological group" -- those in the "free world" -- that is basic.
External national responsibility involves a burgeoning requirement that the leaders of the Western nations so guide their decisions as to further the viability of other friendly nations.
If internal responsibility suggests acceptance of the socialist ideal of equality, then external responsibility implies adherence to principles of ideological supranationalism.

Reference to two other concepts -- nationalism and sovereignty -- may help to reveal the contours of the new principle.
In its beginnings the nation-state had to struggle to assert itself -- internally, against feudal groups, and externally, against the power and influence of such other claimants for loyalty as the Church.
The breakup of the Holy Roman Empire and the downfall of feudalism led, not more than two centuries ago, to the surge of nationalism.
(Since the time-span of the nation-state coincides roughly with the separate existence of the United States as an independent entity, it is perhaps natural for Americans to think of the nation as representative of the highest form of order, something permanent and unchanging.
) The concept of nationalism is the political principle that epitomizes and glorifies the territorial state as the characteristic type of socal structure.
But it is more than that.
For it includes the emotional ties that bind men to their homeland and the complex motivations that hold a large group of people together as a unit.
Today, as new nations rise from the former colonial empires, nationalism is one of the hurricane forces loose in the world.
Almost febrile in intensity, the principle has become worldwide in application -- unfortunately at the very time that nationalist fervors can wreak greatest harm.
Historically, however, the concept is one that has been of marked benefit to the people of the Western civilizational group.
By subduing disparate lesser groups the nation has, to some degree at least, broadened the capacity for individual liberty.
Within their confines, moreover, technological and industrial growth has proceeded at an accelerated pace, thus increasing the cornucopia from which material wants can be satisfied.
While the pattern is uneven, some having gained more than others, nationalism has in fact served the Western peoples well.
(Whether historical nationalism helped the peoples of the remainder of the world, and whether today's nationalism in the former colonial areas has equally beneficial aspects, are other questions.
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It is one of the ironic quirks of history that the viability and usefulness of nationalism and the territorial state are rapidly dissipating at precisely the time that the nation-state attained its highest number (approximately 100).
But it is more than irony: one of the main reasons why nationalism is no longer a tenable concept is because it has spread throughout the planet.
In other words, nationalism worked well enough when it had limited application, both as to geography and as to population;
it becomes a perilous anachronism when adopted on a world-wide basis.

Complementing the political principle of nationalism is the legal principle of sovereignty.
The former receives its legitimacy from the latter.
Operating side by side, together they helped shore up the nation-state.
While sovereignty has roots in antiquity, in its present usage it is essentially modern.
Jean Bodin, writing in the sixteenth century, may have been the seminal thinker, but it was the vastly influential John Austin who set out the main lines of the concept as now understood.
Austin's nineteenth-century view of law and sovereignty still dominates much of today's legal and political thinking.
To him, law is the command of the sovereign (the English monarch) who personifies the power of the nation, while sovereignty is the power to make law -- i.e., to prevail over internal groups and to be free from the commands of other sovereigns in other nations.
These fundamental ideas -- the indivisibility of sovereignty and its dual (internal-external) aspects -- still remain the core of that concept of ultimate political power.

The nation-state, then, exemplifies the principle of nationalism and exercises sovereignty: supreme power over domestic affairs and independence from outside control.
In fact, however, both principles have always been nebulous and loosely defined.
High-level abstractions are always difficult to pin down with precision.
That is particularly true of sovereignty when it is applied to democratic societies, in which "popular" sovereignty is said to exist, and in federal nations, in which the jobs of government are split.
Nevertheless, nationalism and sovereignty are reputed, in the accepted wisdom, to describe the modern world.
Is there a different reality behind the facade?
Does the surface hide a quite different picture?

The short answer to those questions is "yes".
Both concepts are undergoing alteration;
to some degree they are being supplanted by a concept of national responsibility.
As evidence to support that view, consider the following illustrative instances.