Sources in the Modern Tradition

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall Lesaffer
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Grand Narrative ◽  
Historical Source ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
State Practice ◽  
The Law

This chapter considers how the modern historiography of international law has ascribed pride of place to the jurisprudence of the law of nature and nations of the Early Modern Age. Whereas the writers from this period have had a significant influence on nineteenth-century international law, their utility as a historical source has been far overrated. The development of the law of nations in that period was much more informed by State practice than historians have commonly credited. Moreover, historiography has overestimated the novelty of the contribution of Early Modern jurisprudence and has almost cast its major historical source of inspiration into oblivion: the late medieval jurisprudence of canon and Roman law. It is thus important to restore medieval jurisprudence to its rightful place in the grand narrative of the evolution of international law.

The Influence of the Law of Nature Upon International Law in the United States

1909 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-561 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse S. Reeves
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Traditional System ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law ◽  
Scholastic Philosophy

The political philosophers of the eighteenth century might have been surprised if told that their favorite doctrine of natural rights was the intellectual successor of certain theories of the Roman law and of the scholasticism of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Yet the “ state of nature,” which filled so large a place in the discussion of natural rights, has been called “ an exaggerated perversion of what, in traditional system, was quite a subordinant point” From Locke to Hooker, and back through the scholastic philosophy, the germ of natural rights has been traced to the jus naturœ and the jus gentium of the Roman law. Grotius and his successors preserved the tradition in another and more direct line. The continuity of Grotius with the doctrine of the Roman law was complete. “ The law of nature,” said Holland, “ is the foundation, or rather the scaffolding, upon which the modern science of International Law was built up by Gentilis and Grotius. The change in the meaning of jus gentium made by Grotius and his successors, and the influence which the jus naturœ had in forming the new conception of the law of nations can only be referred to here.

The School of Salamanca

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Pagden
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
School Of Salamanca ◽  
The Law ◽  
Ius Gentium ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria

The members of the so-called School of Salamanca (or “Second Scholastic,” as it is sometimes called) were, for the most part, the pupils, and the pupils of the pupils—from Domingo de Soto and Melchor Cano to the great Jesuit metaphysicians Luís de Molina and Francisco Suárez—of Francisco de Vitoria, who held the Prime Chair of Theology at Salamanca between 1526 and his death in 1546. Although they are often described vaguely as “theologians and jurists,” they were all, in fact, theologians. In the early modern world, theology, the “mother of sciences,” was considered to be above all other modes of inquiry, and covered everything that belongs to what today is called jurisprudence, as well as most of moral and political philosophy, and what would later become the human sciences. This article focuses on the Salamanca theologians' discussion of the law of nature—the ius naturae—and of the law of nations (ius gentium), for which reason Vitoria has often been referred to (along with Hugo Grotius) as the “father of international law.”

Hobbes among the Classic Jurists

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Complete Identification ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Hedley Bull ◽  
Hans Morgenthau

The classic foundational status that Hobbes has been afforded by contemporary international relations theorists is largely the work of Hans Morgenthau, Martin Wight, and Hedley Bull. They were not unaware that they were to some extent creating a convenient fiction, an emblematic realist, a shorthand for all of the features encapsulated in the term. The detachment of international law from the law of nature by nineteenth-century positivists opened Hobbes up, even among international jurists, to be portrayed as almost exclusively a mechanistic theorist of absolute state sovereignty. If we are to endow him with a foundational place at all it is not because he was an uncompromising realist equating might with right, on the analogy of the state of nature, but instead to his complete identification of natural law with the law of nations. It was simply a matter of subject that distinguished them, the individual and the state.

{ Epilogue }

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The Law

In drawing on the law of nations, an early modern compilation of writings about war, peace, and the world, the Puritans used literature in the form of generically multifaceted and eclectic discourse to bring the cosmopolis into material being. These imaginative iterations of the Puritans’ experiments with cosmopolitanism constitute the law’s literary past—a past confined not to literary artifacts per se—although the sermons, essays, and correspondence analyzed here provide ample evidence of those—but encompassed by the imaginative enterprise that gives rise to literature in general. The epilogue addresses the transition—from the law of nations to international law—in terms of its impact on cosmopolitanism and the lessons the Puritan engagement with the law of nations may hold for us going forward.

scholarly journals The Principle of Good Faith in Public International Law

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-59
Author(s):  
Talya Uçaryılmaz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Good Faith ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
Abuse Of Power ◽  
Refugee Law ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Private Actors

Honesty, loyalty and reasonableness together refer to the principle of good faith in contemporary private law. The principle of good faith historically emerged as a natural law principle deriving from Roman law of nations, the universal set of rules applicable for all mankind. However, it also has immense historical effects on the early modern theories of international law. Being based on natural law and morality, good faith is well-equipped to be a fundamental standard of behavior in contemporary international law concerns. Good faith manifests itself as pacta sunt servanda as the basis of international treaty law. As a principle referring to honesty, loyalty and reasonableness, it guarantees the prohibition of the abuse of power and provides equitable solutions in legal relationships between sovereigns and private actors. Accordingly this article examines the application of the classical Roman principle of good faith in international law from a transhistorical perspective to clarify its contemporary applications, taking refugee law as an example. It concerns itself with the fundamental elements of good faith, the historical emergence of the principle, its relationship with early modern international legal theories and its contemporary significance in refugee law.Received: 23.10.2019Accepted: 29.12.2019Published online: 03.07.2020

Identifying a Principle of International Law Today

1974 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 106-122
Author(s):  
S. Prakash Sinha
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Law ◽  
General Application ◽  
International Lawyer ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Law

The midwives of international law, Gentili, Grotius, Vitoria, Suarez, Pufendorf, and Wolff, found the principles of this law in the law of nature. This, in turn, was derived by some of them from the law of God and by others from the law of reason. But, as the law of nations grew and its content developed, its derivation was established, particularly with Vattel in the middle of the eighteenth century, from the will of states rather than from the law of nature. Today’s international lawyer simply inherits the principle of identification whereby international-law rules of general application are created by international custom. (This custom is produced by that kind of practice of states relating to a matter of international relations which is concordant and general and is accompanied by the conviction of states that it is obligatory under international law.) The application of this principle of identification, however, is not so simple because of the appearance of three new situations.

scholarly journals Illogicality and Roman Law

1972 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Watson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
International Law ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
The Moon ◽  
Age Of Reason ◽  
The Law

It is a commonplace that Rome's greatest contribution to the modern world is its law. Whether this is strictly true or not, Roman law is certainly the basis of the law of Western Europe (with the exception of England and Scandinavia), of much of Africa including South Africa, Ethiopia and in general the former colonies of countries in continental Europe, of Quebec and Louisiana, of Japan and Ceylon and so on. Perhaps even more important for the future is that International law is very largely modelled, by analogy, on Roman law. Just think of the perfectly serious arguments of a few years ago as to whether outer space (including the moon and planets) were res nullius or res communes and whether they were, or were not, susceptible of acquisition by occupatio. This persistence of Roman law has had undesirable consequences. First, Roman law as an academic subject has got into the hands of lawyers whose love of technicalities has frightened off classical scholars who tend not to use the legal sources. Secondly, scholars of antiquity, since Roman law is left well alone, have also been reluctant to look at other ancient legal systems. So have lawyers since these other systems have no ‘practical” value. Thirdly, following upon these but worse still, the usefulness of Roman law for later ages, coupled with its enforced isolation from other systems of antiquity, has often led to an exaggerated respect for it, and to its being regarded as well-nigh perfect, immutable, fit for all people. Many in “the Age of Reason” were ready to regard Roman law as “the Law of Reason”.

The Use of Vattel in the American Law of Nations

2012 ◽  
Vol 106 (3) ◽  
pp. 547-571 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Peace ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
American Law ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
History Of International Law

Although careful scholarly treatment of the history of international law is now thriving, within U.S. courts that history now begins with one eighteenth-century treatise published in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1758 and published in translation for modern readers under the aegis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1916. This treatise is Emer de Vattel’s Droit des gens ou principes de la loi naturelle, appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains. My aim in this article is to appraise the elevation of Vattel to vaunted originalist heights in U.S. law. The claim that Vattel’s theory of the law of nations completely represents how the Founding Fathers (Founders) understood the law of nations should be rejected as a matter of history.

The Dilemma of Humanitarian Intervention: The Executive Power of the Law of Nature, After God

1994 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Dunn
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Executive Power ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Territorial Jurisdiction ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
The Law

There are at Least Three Possible Types of View about the justifiability of the use of force by states or private individuals on behalf of other private individuals or groups who are the victims of brutal and gratuitous coercion by another state. The first type of view is that no human being, and a fortiori no state, can be justified in using force under any circumstances and for any purpose, because (and only because) force is an intrinsic evil. This unflinchingly deontological view is generous but practically absurd. The second type of view is that states (or even private individuals) can be, and often arc, justified in using force against the brutally coercive actions of another state when, but only when, the latter is acting outside its own territorial jurisdiction. At least in the case of states what grounds that justification is their entitlement to defend themselves against foreign (as against domestic) aggression, and to defend also any other states with whom they have linked themselves either by standing alliances or by solemn common undertakings to secure each other's safety and sovereignty within the bounds of international law. In the case of private individuals, the corresponding justification would lie in their several personal entitlements to defend themselves as best they can against aggression.

Natural Law in Early Modern Legal Thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ibbetson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Hugo Grotius

Natural law thinking in the early modern world had two principal roots: Greco-Roman moral philosophy and Roman law. These two strands came together in sixteenth-century Spain, from where they influenced the Dutchman Hugo Grotius. Grotius can be seen as the channel through which this thinking reached a pan-European audience. His works, and the works of his followers, came to have an enormous influence on the development of legal thought and practice after the seventeenth century. Ideas of natural law were no longer regarded as dependent on God’s will. A rational structure could be derived from self-evident premises in the law of nature and identification of concrete rules of natural law was regarded as the work of human reason. These features, coupled with its seeming moral objectivity, allowed natural law to provide a template for positive legal systems, and fuelled the move towards codification of law in eighteenth-century Europe.

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