Phil in SF quoted Judgment at Tokyo by Gary J. Bass
In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, …
Ridiculing Webb with none of Mei's courteousness, Röling scoffed that natural law, if it was ever "more than a mere desideratum," was not a part of the positive international law in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
— Judgment at Tokyo by Gary J. Bass (Page 1,118)
new word: desideratum
something that is needed or wanted