From the late 19th century on, a series of social and economic changes have altered the system of labour relations. The transition of bargaining over terms of employment, from the individual to the collective sphere, was the culmination of the historical stages of development. Changes in labour relations have always been, and remain dynamic. Therefore, collective labour law, like the industrial relations system itself, is constantly taking new steps to formulate up-to-date patterns of thought and behaviour. Hence, the legal system finds it difficult to dictate firm policies, and can only try to catch up with the development by post factum legislation and theorization, which can set but a broad and flexible framework.

The collective agreement is presented in this study as a universal phenomenon, resulting from the historical stages of development in labour relations. These stages have led to the crystallization of the collective agreement as it is known today, and to the formulation of its distinctive traits.

Dean Acheson frankly reconfirmed the right of self-preservation, when he asserted, “…law simply does not deal with … questions of ultimate power—power that comes close to the sources of sovereignty…. No law can destroy the state creating the law. The survival of states is not a matter of law”. It is beyond the law.

Given the existence of man's elementary loyalty to autonomous states, the necessity for using force springs from the need of states to depend fundamentally on self-help in order to guarantee their survival and welfare. This search for security in a system of politics without government, forces the state to be dependent upon military self-help.

We know nothing of the local organization of the Jews in the Visigothic kingdom. It seems likely that their communities (called conventus in the statutes) preserved the same framework as they had had under the Roman rule. Recognized by law as long as the Jewish cult was licit, the Jewish communities were to be deprived of their legal existence by those kings who compelled the Jewish to baptism.

Thus we have no information about their internal organization during either the Arian or Catholic regimes, save for some fragmentary data which have reached us concerning two Jewish communal institutions.