The Draughtsmen
Little is known about the formal crafting of the Paris Peace Treaties in 1919/20 and the set of international lawyers that was tasked to draft the hundreds and thousands of articles of one of the most contested peace settlements of all times. Taking a fresh look behind the scenes of the negotiations in Paris, this chapter unearths role and influence of the drafting committee, offers a characterization of the in-house lawyers involved, and examines how they transformed political bargaining into legally binding rules and treaty provisions. The broader aim is to explore what international legal advisors do in government service and how they operate along the blurred the boundary between law and politics.