SEMINAR: Neue Kriege ? (Vienna: Universität Wien, 1-2 Jun 2017)

The University of Vienna (Institute for Constitutional and Legal History, prof. dr. M. Vec) organizes a two-day seminar on "New Wars".

More information in the elaborate program here.

BOOK: Dante FEDELE, Naissance de la diplomatie moderne (XIIIe-XVIIe siècles). L'ambassadeur au croisement du droit, de l'éthique et de la politique [Studien sur Geschichte des Völkerrechts; 36). Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 2017, 830 p. ISBN 9783848741274, € 198.

(image source: Nomos)

Dante Fedele (KULeuven) published his PhD dissertation (ENS Lyon) in the collection Studien zur Geschichte des Völkerrechts (Nomos).

Abstract:

The author investigates the birth of modern diplomacy. Drawing on a wide-ranging body of textual materials dealing with the ambassador from the 13th to the 17th century, he analyses how that figure was developed within a complex constantly renewed field of interaction between law, ethics and politics, where theory and practise are intertwined in an unresolved dialectical interaction. The first part examines how the legal status of the ambassador was shaped during the late Middle Ages and how this process influenced early-modern scholarship on diplomacy. The second part investigates how the emergence of the modern State both reinvigorated and reshaped the scholarly approaches to the different themes linked to the figure of the ambassador. The third part proposes an account of how the professional status of the ambassador developed within the examined body of literature. Through the prism of these approaches, diplomacy appears as a foundational matrix of modern political rationality.

More information on the publisher's website.

BOOK: Elisabetta FIOCCHI MALASPINA, L'eterno ritorno del Droit des gens di Emer de Vattel (secc. XVIII-XIX). L'impatto sulla cultura giuridica in prospettiva globale [Global Perspectives on Legal History, 8]. Frankfurt: MPI, 2017

Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina, L'eterno ritorno del Droit des gens di Emer de Vattel (secc. XVIII-XIX), May 2017

Global Perspectives on Legal History 8

With “L'eterno ritorno del Droit des gens di Emer de Vattel (secc. XVIII-XIX)” by Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina, the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History presents the newest publication in its book series "Global Perspectives on Legal History".

Global Perspectives on Legal History is a book series edited and published by the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

As its title suggests, the series is designed to advance the scholarly research of legal historians worldwide who seek to transcend the established boundaries of national legal scholarship that typically sets the focus on a single, dominant modus of normativity and law. The series aims to privilege studies dedicated to reconstructing the historical evolution of normativity from a global perspective.

It includes monographs, editions of sources, and collaborative works. All titles in the series are available both as premium print-on-demand and in the open-access format.

More information on the series and forthcoming volumes: http://global.rg.mpg.de

Prof. Dr. iur. Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina is Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich

L'eterno ritorno del Droit des gens di Emer de Vattel (secc. XVIII-XIX)

L'impatto sulla cultura giuridica in prospettiva globale

Global Perspectives on Legal History 8

Frankfurt am Main: Max Planck Institute for European Legal History 2017. 364 p., € 17,69 D

ISBN: 978-3-944773-07-0

Open Access Online Edition: http://dx.doi.org/10.12946/gplh8

Print-on-demand: http://www.epubli.de/shop/buch/63133

The numerous editions and early translations produced throughout the eighteenth century enabled the broad dissemination of Emer de Vattel’s juridical-political work Droit des gens. This book investigates the global impact of the Droit des gens with regard to the different political realities, the historical and legal contexts as well as the attempts, mechanisms and strategies used to put these ideas into practice and establish new doctrine between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The Droit des gens had an extremely diverse impact, owing to its varied reception in different political situations, historical and legal contexts, and attempts at practical and theoretical implementation. The fact that Vattel’s book was a point of reference for a considerable number of jurists and politicians further demonstrates its authority in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The question naturally arises whether the continuous references to the work may be regarded as «typical citations of style», simply confined to referencing Vattel’s thought, or whether they are a clear sign of a deeper significance; one springing directly from the characteristics of the Droit des gens, with its capacity to organise and regulate the State in its domestic and international relations.

The dissemination of the Droit des gens is reconstructed via a broad overview of the dynamics that actually underpinned the use of the treatise, ranging from its influence on political power in domestic and foreign affairs to its use as a guidebook for diplomats and consuls, and even its use as a teaching manual.

Co-existing in Vattel’s work are several topics—the legislative, the political and the social—which are developed independently of one another, yet are part of one unified framework. The book aims to bring together a study of the first publication in 1758 of Vattel’s Droit des gens, its constant interaction with subsequent editions, translations and annotated versions carried out by jurists in the 19^th century its critical reception (both positive and negative) in relation to the more complex legislative contexts. The publishing history of the Droit des gens will be accompanied by the methodological aspect—closely bound to the need to write a global legal history—in which translation, in the broader sense of the term, plays a key role. Concepts of fashion and modernity are examined within the context of the practical and theoretical legal entanglements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thanks to the voices of distinguished jurists and politicians who made use of the Droit des gens and who translated and annotated it, thereby encouraging the assimilation—not always unadulterated—of Vattel’s thinking.

(Source: ESCLH blog)

SYMPOSIUM: Evaluating the Turn to History of International Law (ESIL Conference, Naples, 6 Sep 2017)

ESIL 2017 Annual Conference

Symposium of the 

Interest Group on the History of International Law

“Evaluating the Turn to History of International Law” 

Naples, Wednesday, 6 September 2017

13:00-17:00, Venue TBA

13:00: Welcome and Opening Remarks

Thomas Skouteris (The American University in Cairo)

13:00-14:30: Session 1

Martin Clark (London School of Economics): “Ambivalences, anxieties / Adaptations, advances”

Valentina Vadi (Lancaster University): “International Law and its Microhistories”

Amrita Mukherjee (University of Leeds): “Subaltern Studies & International Law”

Discussant: Gerry Simpson (London School of Economics)

Moderator: Thomas Skouteris (The American University in Cairo)

15:00-16:30: Session 2

Miriam Bak Mackenna (Lund University) & Matilda Arvidsson (Lund University): “The ‘turn to history’ and the sources doctrine in international law: disruption, democratization, and distress”

Jan Martin Lemnitzer (University of Southern Denmark): “Writing a new history of international criminal law – where do we start?

Immi Tallgren (University of Helsinki): “A turn to women? Histories of ‘international criminal lawyers”

Discussant: Ignacio de la Rasilla del Moral (Brunel University)

Moderator: Inge van Hulle (Tilburg University)

16:30: Closing remarks and discussion on future activities of the IGHIL

Symposium Conveners/ IGHIL Coordinating Committee Members

Frederik Dhondt, Inge van Hulle, Ignacio de la Rasilladel Moral, and Thomas Skouteris