Như vậy, sự xuất hiện của một thế tục pháp luật, tự nhiên quy luật tự nhiên đã được công bố là cơ sở của luật pháp quốc tế mới - là đồng niên với độ phân giải của ông về vấn đề tư cách pháp lý của Ấn Độ, vì nó là vấn đề này mà khởiyêu cầu của Vitoria. | 18 imperialism sovereignty and international law by a secular sovereign. Thus the emergence of a secular natural law -the natural law which was proclaimed to be the basis of the new international law - is coeval with his resolution of the problem of the legal status of the Indian for it is this problem which initiates Vitoria s inquiry. Vitoria commences his construction of a new jurisprudence by posing the question of whether the aborigines in question were true owners in both private and public law before the arrival of the Spaniards .14 Could the Indians the unbelievers own property Rather than adopt the traditional approach of dismissing the Indians as lacking in rights merely because of their status as unbelievers Vitoria reformulates the relationship between divine natural and human law. Having examined numerous theological authorities and incidents in the Bible he concludes that whatever the punishments awaiting them in their after-life unbelievers such as the Indians were not deprived of their property in the mundane realm merely by virtue of that status. Vitoria concludes Unbelief does not destroy either natural law or human law but ownership and dominion are based either on natural law or human law therefore they are not destroyed by want of Crucially then Vitoria places questions of ownership and property in the sphere of natural or human law rather than divine law. As a consequence of the inapplicability of divine law to questions of ownership the Indians cannot be deprived of their lands merely by virtue of their status as unbelievers or Vitoria s argument that vital issues of property and title are decided by secular systems of law -- whether natural or human -- inevitably diminishes the power of the Pope for these secular systems of law are administered by the sovereign rather than the Pope. Vitoria further undermines the position of the Church by refuting another justification for Spanish conquest of the Indies the argument that
