Twelve international scholars offer innovative studies of the law of nations from the Peace of Westphalia to the Enlightenment. The focus is on little known contexts and sources, and on novel interpretations of classics in the field.
The Law of Nations and Natural Law 1625-1800 offers innovative studies on the development of the law of nations after the Peace of Westphalia. This period was decisive for the origin and constitution of the discipline which eventually emancipated itself from natural law and became modern international law. A specialist on the law of nations in the Swiss context and on its major figure, Emer de Vattel, Simone Zurbuchen prompted scholars to explore the law of nations in various European contexts. The volume studies little known literature related to the law of nations as an academic discipline, offers novel interpretations of classics in the field, and deconstructs ‘myths’ associated with the law of nations in the Enlightenment.
Despite its significant influence on international law, international relations, natural law and political thought in general, Grotius's Law of War and Peace has been virtually unavailable for many decades. Stephen Neff's edited and annotated version of the text rectifies this situation. Containing the substantive portion of the classic text, but shorn of extraneous material, this edited and annotated edition of one of the classic works of Western legal and political thought is intended for students and teachers in four primary areas: history of international law, history of political thought, history of international relations and history of philosophy.
This concise book is an introduction to the role of international law in international relations. Written for lawyers and non-lawyers alike, the book first appeared in 1928 and attracted a wide readership. This new edition builds on Brierly's scholarship and his idea that law must serve a social purpose. Previous editions of The Law of Nations have been the standard introduction to international law for decades, and are widely popular in many different countries due to the simplicity and brevity of the prose style. Providing a comprehensive overview of international law, this new version of the classic book retains the original qualities and is again essential reading for all those interested in learning what role the law plays in international affairs. The reader will find chapters on traditional and contemporary topics such as: the basis of international obligation, the role of the UN and the International Criminal Court, the emergence of new states, the acquisition of territory, the principles covering national jurisdiction and immunities, the law of treaties, the different ways of settling international disputes, and the rules on resort to force and the prohibition of aggression.
This is the first book to explore the concept of 'Grotian Moments'. Named for Hugo Grotius, whose masterpiece De jure belli ac pacis helped marshal in the modern system of international law, Grotian Moments are transformative developments that generate the unique conditions for accelerated formation of customary international law. In periods of fundamental change, whether by technological advances, the commission of new forms of crimes against humanity, or the development of new means of warfare or terrorism, customary international law may form much more rapidly and with less state practice than is normally the case to keep up with the pace of developments. The book examines the historic underpinnings of the Grotian Moment concept, provides a theoretical framework for testing its existence and application, and analyzes six case studies of potential Grotian Moments: Nuremberg, the continental shelf, space law, the Yugoslavia Tribunal's Tadic decision, the 1999 NATO intervention in Serbia and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
This book argues that the introduction of popular sovereignty as the basis for government in France facilitated a dramatic transformation in international law in the eighteenth century.
First published in Italian in 1990, Fiammetta Palladini’s ground-breaking study of Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694) remains one of the most important discussions of the subject to date. Now available in English for the first time, Palladini's book cuts through the existing field of Pufendorf studies, laying bare its inherited templates and tacit assumptions. Palladini is thus able to peel back the ‘Grotian’ commentary in which the great thinker had been shrouded, revealing a Pufendorf well-known in the 1680s—a formidable and dangerous natural jurist and political theorist—but doubly obscured in the 1980s and still today, by a philosophical history that flies too high to see him, and by a commentary literature that too often does not like what it sees. David Saunders’ lucid translation carries Palladini’s argument into English with maximum fidelity. Translation of: Samuel Pufendorf discepolo di Hobbes. Per una reinterpretazione del giusnaturalismo moderno (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990).
The concept of customary international law, although differently formulated, is already present in early modern European debates on natural law and the law of nations. However, no scholarly monograph has, until now, addressed the relationship between custom and the European natural law and ius gentium tradition. This book tells that neglected story, and offers a solid conceptual framework to contextualize and understand the 'problematic of custom', namely how to identify its normative content. Natural law doctrines, and the different ways in which they help construct human reason, provided custom with such normative content. This normative content consists of a set of fundamental moral values that help identify the status of custom as either a fundamental feature or an original source of ius gentium. This book explores what cultural values and practices facilitated the emergence of custom and rendered it into as a source of the law of nations, and how they did so. Two crucial issues form the core of the book's analysis. Firstly, it qualifies the nature of the interrelation between natural law and ius gentium, explaining why it matters in relation to our understanding of the idea of custom. Second, the book claims that the process of custom formation as a source of law calls into question the role of the authority of history. The interpretation of the past through this approach can thus be described as one of 'invention'.