Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Wijffels, Alain --- "Early-Modern Scholarship on International Law" [2011] ELECD 571; in Orakhelashvili, Alexander (ed), "Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Theory and History of International Law

Editor(s): Orakhelashvili, Alexander

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848443549

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Early-Modern Scholarship on International Law

Author(s): Wijffels, Alain

Number of pages: 38

Extract:

2 Early-modern scholarship on international law
Alain Wijffels


The development of international law scholarship from the 16th until the 18th century can
be attributed to different changes in a wider context1. One major factor was the continu-
ing development of legal scholarship in general, which, on the European continent, main-
tained its roots in the civil law tradition2. Another was the establishment of the territorial
sovereign state as the new paradigm of political power. In both cases, the influence was
incremental: early-modern legal scholarship evolved from late-medieval legal methods,
and, similarly, the early-modern state retained until the end of the Ancien Régime many


1
Most general surveys on the history of international law include sections on international
law scholarship, sometimes in greater detail than in the present chapter. Among the older works
which are still quoted: A. Nussbaum, A Concise History of the Law of Nations, New York, The
Macmillan Company, 1954 (revised edn.); History of International Law in Encyclopedia of Public
International Law, Amsterdam, New York, Oxford, North Holland, 1984, vol. 7, esp. the entries
on `History of the Law of Nations: Ancient Times to 1648', and `History of the Law of Nations:
1648 to 1815', pp. 132­179; A.C.G.M. Eyffinger (ed.), Compendium rechtsgeschiedenis, Deventer,
Kluwer, 1991 (2nd edn.); W.G. Grewe, The Epochs of International Law. Translated and revised by
Michael Byers, Berlin, New York, Walter de Gruyter, 2000 (based on the older, original version
in German). More recent surveys ...