I Aside from its obsession for detail, the scientific mind also seeks to comprehend an object under study as an entire system, rather than a mere totality of individual instances.
Law is no exception.
For a strict positivist, gaps tend to become identified with areas where legislation is absent. Fastenrath looks at gaps from an external, systemic perspective, aiming to throw light on their character and function within the legal system as a whole, or what from his hermeneutical standpoint seems to amount to the same, the legal systems proposed by various authors. Nonetheless, the topic has a practical import. The approaches employed have a bearing on whether it is possible to accept that international law has universal application, and what should be seen as its proper legal sources, the political points of entry for the legal argument. Such an approach aims to vindicate the fundamental character of legal theory for international law as social practice.