Jefferson and the Law of Nations

1919 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-399
Author(s):  
Louis Martin Sears
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Human Relations ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
New Development ◽  
Practical Politics ◽  
The Law ◽  
New Nation ◽  
International Anarchy

The embargo upon commerce which Congress at the suggestion of President Jefferson decreed in 1807 was more than an experiment in practical politics. It was the test on a magnificent scale of a theory of international law long maturing in the President's mind, and the fitting contribution of a new nation to a body of doctrine which owed its revival, if not its inception, to the need of curbing the international anarchy which accompanied the rise of modern states. The law of nations was a new development. Less than two centuries had passed since Grotius put forth the pioneer work De jure belli ac pacis (1625). The interval between the publication of Grotius' book and the issuance of the embargo decree was, in fact, the classical period in international law. The labors of Leibnitz, Wolff, Vattel, and Bynkershoek built up a system popular, not only with doctrinaires and philosophers, but even with enlightened despots in their more subjective moments. By the close of the eighteenth century, the law of nations had acquired as much prestige as it could ever hope to secure without the support of its own guns and navies. It was the highest political expression of an age which believed in the perfectability of human relations through sheer intellect. And if its dicta sometimes failed to govern the actions of courts and cabinets, its infringement was not a matter of indifference. Nations broke treaties, to be sure, but they did not call them “scraps of paper.”

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 Theory of Recognition in Fieri (1958)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Direct Influence ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Formative Stage ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
New States ◽  
The Law

The historian of international law attempting an inquiry into the law of recognition of States and governments during its formative stage, particularly into eighteenth-century sources, is bound to consult the first historical survey of the literature of the law of nations by D. H. L. Ompteda, published in 1785. Ompteda referred to problems of recognition under the general heading of the fundamental right of nations to freedom and independence. All the essays he mentioned as being directly or indirectly relevant to problems of recognition of new States or rulers were written by comparatively unknown authors. Among them, Justi and Steck were perhaps the most active participants in the first attempts to formulate a theory of recognition. This chapter considers these early attempts, in particular the direct influence of Justi and Steck on Martens and Klueber, and through them on Henry Wheaton and some of the early nineteenth-century writers.

Carl Schmitt's Vattel and the 'Law of Nations' between Enlightenment and Revolution

Grotiana ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isaac Nakhimovsky
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Total War ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Law ◽  
History Of International Law

AbstractThis article questions the status of Vattel's Law of Nations as an exemplary illustration of eighteenth-century developments in the history of international law. Recent discussions of the relation between eighteenth-century thinking about the law of nations and the French Revolution have revived Carl Schmitt's contention about the nexus between just war theory and the emergence of total war. This evaluative framework has been used to identify Vattel as a moral critic of absolutism who helped undermine the barriers against total war, as well as an architect and defender of those very barriers. Neither of these opposing readings is corroborated by late-eighteenth-century commentators on Vattel's treatise. To its late-eighteenth-century critics and defenders alike, Vattel's Law of Nations was distinguished by the weakness of its derivation of the law of nations from principles of natural law. Insofar as these readers did link Vattel to justifications of relatively unrestrained forms of warfare, they did so in connection with the perceived weakness of Vattel's moral position rather than with its strength. This late-eighteenth-century consensus on the defining features of Vattel's approach to the law of nations sits uncomfortably with Schmitt's evaluative framework, and indeed with other assessments of Vattel that limit themselves to orienting his treatise along fault lines in the historiography of international law.

Constitutional limitations on the Treatymaking Power

1941 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 462-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Mervyn Jones
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern Theory ◽  
International Agreement ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law

It is impossible to deny that the early rule of international law was that the head of state, either directly or through his agents, was alone competent to make treaties, which were binding upon his successors. This was natural at a time when no type of international agreement was known other than the treaty in solemn form to which monarchs were parties. Today, new types of agreement have come into being, to which the parties are not heads of states but either the state itself (as in the Treaty of Versailles, 1919) or governments or departments of state. In all these cases, and even in cases where the parties are formally the heads of states, the unit now considered to be bound is the state, through its organs. This substitution of states for monarchs as the subjects of the law of nations, at any rate in the matter of treaties, has been brought about very largely by the French and American Revolutions of the eighteenth century, and by the development of the notion of the state as an international person. The question of the competence to make treaties binding on states, who may by their laws have limited that competence, has therefore become one of great interest in modern theory.

A Short History of International Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen C Neff
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law ◽  
History Of International Law

This chapter presents a brief history of international law. It proceeds chronologically, beginning with an overview of the ancient world, followed by a more detailed discussion of the great era of natural law in the European Middle Ages. The classical period (1600–1815) witnessed the emergence of a dualistic view of international law, with the law of nature and the law of nations co-existing (more or less amicably). In the nineteenth century—the least-known part of international law—doctrinaire positivism was the prevailing viewpoint, though not the exclusive one. For the inter-war years, developments both inside and outside the League of Nations are considered. The chapter concludes with some historically oriented comments on international law during the post-1945 period.

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.

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.

Book III Privileges and Immunities, 13 Privileges and Immunities of Diplomatic Missions

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Foakes Joanne ◽  
Denza Eileen
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The Law ◽  
Special Protection

This chapter provides an overview of diplomatic privileges and immunities. Two fundamental rules of diplomatic law—that the person of the ambassador is inviolable and that a special protection must be given to the messages which are sent to and received from the ambassador’s sovereign—have been recognized from time immemorial among civilized States. The law of nations—now known as public international law—required States which accepted foreign diplomats to guarantee rights necessary to enable them to exercise their functions, including independence from local jurisdiction. It was important that ambassadors should not be afraid of traps or distracted by legal trickery. As such, the chapter discusses several areas where these privileges and immunities occur: the premises of the mission, the diplomatic asylum, the exemption of mission premises from taxation, the inviolability of mission archives, freedom of communications, the diplomatic bag, and freedom of movement.

The Puritan Cosmopolis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Goodman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Law And Literature ◽  
Significant Relation ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
The World ◽  
The Law

This book traces the emergence of a sense of kinship with and belonging to a larger, more inclusive world within the law and literature of late seventeenth-century Puritanism. Connected to this cosmopolitanism in part through travel, trade, and politics, late seventeenth-century Puritans, it is argued, were also thinking in terms that went beyond these parameters about what it meant to feel affiliated with people in remote places—of which the Ottoman Empire is the best, but not the only example—and to experience what Bruce Robbins calls “attachment at a distance.” In this way Puritan writers and readers were not simply learning about others but also cultivating an awareness of themselves as “stand[ing] in an ethically significant relation” to people all around the world. The underlying source of these cosmopolitan predilections was the law, specifically the law of nations, often considered the precursor to international law. Through the terms for sovereignty, obligation, and society made available by a turn toward the cosmopolitan within the law, the Puritans experimented with concepts of extended obligation and ideas about a society consisting of all humans, not just those living on certain trade routes or within certain foreign communities. In mapping out these thought experiments, The Puritan Cosmopolis uncovers Puritans who were reconceptualizing war, contemplating new ways of cultivating peace, and rewriting the rules for being Puritan by internalizing legal theories about living in a larger, more inclusive world.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document