 The problem with theories about absolute sovereignty is that they can only, at best, support a narrow consent-based idea of international law which, as the discussion of the sources of international law in the earlier section has shown, does not reflect the reality of how rules of international law are created, interpreted and applied. Some classical international law thinkers writing in the natural law tradition, like Alberico Gentili (Wagner 2017), argued that it was possible to reconcile absolute sovereignty with a fuller idea of international law by postulating that only voluntary (i.e., positive), but not involuntary (i.e., natural law), rules imposed by international law on states impinge on the concept of absolute sovereignty. In other words, one can be absolutely sovereign and still subject to natural law.