scholarly journals Theory in History: Positivism, Natural Law and Conjectural History in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-century English Legal Thought

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Conjectural History

Cardinal Richelieu between Vattel and Machiavelli

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Carty
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Practical Implementation ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Rule Of Reason

The view that no form of international law existed in seventeenth-century France, and that this time was a part of ‘prehistory’, and thus irrelevant for international legal thought today is challenged. In addition, the traditional claim of Richelieu to be an admirer of Machiavelli and his Ragion di Stato doctrine to the detriment of the aim of concluding treaties and keeping them (as sacred), is refuted by careful historical research. In Richelieu’s thinking, there is a role for law to play but it is law as justice, law in the classical natural law tradition. Those who rule are subject to the rule of law as justice, the rule of God, or the rule of reason. In Richelieu’s world, kings and ministers are rational instruments of the practical implementation of God’s will on earth.

Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades

1992 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 609
Author(s):  
Daryl M. Hafter ◽  
Michael Sonenscher
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural Law

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.

Substitutes for Natural Law

2021 ◽  
pp. 188-221
Author(s):  
Stuart Banner
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Positive Law ◽  
Fresh Perspective

This chapter offers a fresh perspective on some familiar aspects of the legal thought of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by connecting them to the decline of natural law. Much of what we now call classical legal thought can be understood as the profession’s attempt to find a substitute for natural law, either by replicating the method of natural law with principles found elsewhere than in nature or by bringing natural law into the courtroom indirectly through positive law. At the same time, the decline of natural law led to the emergence of the view that judges are makers, not finders, of law.

Carmichael, Gershom (1672–1729)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Moore ◽  
Michael Silverthorne
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
The University

Gershom Carmichael was a teacher and writer of pivotal importance for the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. He was the first Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, predecessor of Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith and Thomas Reid. Carmichael introduced the natural law tradition of Grotius, Pufendorf and Locke to the moral philosophy courses he taught at the University of Glasgow (1694–1729). His commentaries on Samuel Pufendorf’s work on the duty of man and citizen (1718 and 1724) made his teaching available to a wider readership in Great Britain and in Europe. He also composed an introduction to logic, Breviuscula Introductio ad Logicam, (1720 and 1722) and a brief system of natural theology, Synopsis Theologiae Naturalis (1729).

Part I Histories, Ch.5 The Critique of Classical Thought during the Interwar Period: Vattel and Van Vollenhoven

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tourme-Jouannet Emmanuelle
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Classical Model ◽  
Legal Thought ◽  
Classical Conception ◽  
Small Work ◽  
International Thought

This chapter connects the larger theme of the link between contemporary law and classical international thought to the ideas posited by two jurists—Cornelis Van Vollenhoven and Emer de Vattel. In 1919, Van Vollenhoven published a small work in which he issued a fierce critique of classical (legal) thought, which, according to him, was embodied by the eighteenth-century jurist, Emer de Vattel. The classical conception of international law was never expounded more clearly than in Vattel’s 1758 work, Le droit des gens, ou principes de la loi naturelle, appliqués à la conduit et aux affaires des Nations et des Souverains. Hence, by studying Vattel’s and Van Vollenhoven’s doctrines, of which the latter offers a distorted reflection of the former, it is possible to contribute to elucidating the concerns, weaknesses, and current incarnations of that classical model.

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