hegel believed that civil society and the state were polar opposites, within the scheme of his dialectic theory of history. the modern dipole state–civil society was reproduced in the theories of alexis de tocqueville and karl marx. nowadays in post-modern theory civil society is necessarily a source of law, by being the basis from which people form opinions and lobby for what they believe law should be. as australian barrister and author geoffrey robertson qc wrote of international law,