Regular War and Resort to Force in the Enlightenment

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-96
Author(s):  
Pablo Kalmanovitz
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Christian Wolff ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law ◽  
State Rights ◽  
Broad Understanding

Chapter 3 turns to the Enlightenment and looks at how Christian Wolff and Emer de Vattel—two of its foremost international thinkers—articulated the doctrine of ius ad bellum in the theory of regular war. The chapter shows that they gave legal weight to both sovereign standing and the justice of the cause, but their views on just cause departed radically from scholastic doctrines of just war. They understood the justice of a cause not in analogy to a legal trial but rather in the context of the international practice of publishing “war manifestoes” that offered plausible reasons for waging war. Such reasons had to be framed in the language of the law of nations and show that sovereigns took seriously state rights, but they belonged to a broad understanding of sovereign judgment in which usually all lawful enemies at war could simultaneously offer plausible reasons for war.

Hugo Grotius on Solemn War and the Difference Sovereignty Makes

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-68
Author(s):  
Pablo Kalmanovitz
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Corrective Justice ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Effects Of War

Chapter 2 turns to the work of Hugo Grotius, specifically to his account of solemn war in De iure belli ac pacis. The chapter examines why Grotius introduced the solemn war concept alongside his version of the scholastic concept of just war. While just wars are constrained by principles of just cause and corrective justice, solemn wars are eminently permissive affairs, really a sovereign prerogative to use force against all enemy subjects. The chapter discusses why Grotius thought solemn wars should be the exclusive privilege of sovereigns and why they could be so permissive. It argues that for him the rules of solemn war governed the foreseeable effects of war, and their value rested in their power to minimize the lethality, extension, and duration of war. If justice mandates that rulers wage only just wars, prudence dictates that only the rules of solemn war be included in the law of nations.

Sovereignty, Pluralism, and Regular War: Wolff and Vattel’s Enlightenment Critique of Just War

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Kalmanovitz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Just War ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Christian Wolff ◽  
Just Cause ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Just War Tradition ◽  
War Discourse

Since its early origins, just war discourse has had two contrasting functions: it has sought to speak law and morals to power, and thus to restrain the use of force, but it has also served to authorize and legitimize the use of force. Critical voices have recently alerted to the increasing use of authorization and legitimization in a broader context of hegemonic and unilateral appropriations of just war discourse. In this article, I show that such critiques of just war have a long history, and reconstruct the powerful challenge that two of the foremost international jurists of the Enlightenment—Christian Wolff and Emer de Vattel—mounted against early modern accounts of just war. Their neglected theory of “regular war” helps us to recover a sense of what a truly pluralist and anti-hegemonic doctrine of ius ad bellum may look like, and reveals a deep tension in the just war tradition between the criteria of political authority and just cause.

Political Theology, Ius Gentium, and Just War in Spanish Scholasticism

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-44
Author(s):  
Pablo Kalmanovitz
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Just War ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law ◽  
Ius Gentium

Chapter 1 focuses on the early modern theologians and jurists of Spanish scholasticism. It begins by discussing the theological and metaphysical premises on which they built their doctrine of just war, and then turns to examine how they used the vocabulary of the Roman ius gentium in their construction. The chapter underscores the theologians’ self-understanding as providers of guidance for priests administering the sacrament of confession. The law of nations was central to their solution to the questions of whether and how war could be fought without sinning. Rulers who waged war to enforce their rights were free of sin, as were also soldiers who followed the command of legitimate rulers. While this solution worked for confession, it created a juridical problem the scholastics recognized but did not solve: rulers are judge and party in disputes that lead to war.

Vattel's 'Law of Nations ' and the Principle of Non-Intervention

Grotiana ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simone Zurbuchen
Keyword(s):  
New World ◽  
Just War ◽  
Laws Of War ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Technical Sense ◽  
The Law ◽  
Internal Affairs ◽  
The Right

AbstractThe paper attempts to show that Vattel established a duty of sovereigns not to interfere in the internal affairs of other states. Although Vattel did not use the terms 'interference' or 'intervention' in any technical sense of the term, it seems justified to see him as an early proponent of what is called today the principle of non-intervention. This will be evidenced by reviewing how Vattel rejected some of the arguments put forward by previous theorists of just war (Gentili, Grotius) who defended the right of European states to intervene in states of the New World in order to punish gross violations of the law of nature and nations. Arguing that the laws of war ought to be applied in reciprocal manner, Vattel questioned the distinction between 'civilized' and 'barbarian' nations on which these previous theorists relied. For him, the true 'barbarians' were those nations who fought wars without even attempting to publicly justify their behaviour.

On the Use and Abuse of Francisco de Vitoria: James Brown Scott and Carl Schmitt

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-372
Author(s):  
Joshua Smeltzer
Keyword(s):  
Just War ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
World War ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
History Of ◽  
Formal Equality ◽  
The Law ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria

AbstractThis article traces the use and abuse of Francisco de Vitoria in the work of James Brown Scott and Carl Schmitt. With reference to his notebook entries from the period, it argues that Schmitt’s interpretation of Francisco de Vitoria and the Respublica Christiana in Der Nomos der Erde was a polemical response to the work of James Brown Scott, meant to weaponise the legacy of Vitoria and thereby undercut the basis for liberal internationalist theories of just war and the formal equality of states. In doing so, the present study provides a historicist account of Schmitt’s own attempt to construct a history of the law of nations in the aftermath of World War II.

Justice, War and Inequality. The Unjust Aggressor and the Enemy of the Human Race in Vattel's Theory of the Law of Nations

Grotiana ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriella Silvestrini
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Just War ◽  
International Order ◽  
State System ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Human Race ◽  
European State ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law

AbstractThis article discusses the well-known verdict of Vattel's legal positivism in relation to concepts of modernity and the European State System (Schmitt, Remec) and aims at a re-interpretation of Vattel's understanding of the modern state, just war and the international order. It wants to show that even though States and individuals do not obey the same logic and reason, Vattel was neiter a Hobbesian thinker nor, as Kant claimed, a 'sorry comforter'. The main reason for this is that Vattel's doctrine of the war en forme does not imply a break with the tradition of just war. Instead, it should be read as a reformulation of the inegalitarian notion of the enemy as proposed by just war doctrines. Pointing out to the persistance of a jusnaturalistic framework, the article shows that Vattel's concept of justus hostis is built on the same conceptual framework as the concept of the enemy of the human race.

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.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document