Grotian law and modernity at the dawn of a new age
400 years of De jure belli ac pacis 1625-2025
International Conference 19-20 June 2025
Leiden University Wijnhaven Campus, The Hague
Call for papers
On
the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the first publication of De
jure belli ac pacis by Hugo Grotius in 1625, an international conference
will be organized by the Grotiana Foundation, the Paul Scholten Centre for
Jurisprudence at the University of Amsterdam, the Grotius Centre for
International Legal Studies at the University of Leiden and the Department of
Public Law and Governance at Tilburg University.
In
1925, the third centenary of the first publication of Hugo Grotius’ most
seminal work on the law of nations, De jure belli ac pacis libri tres (Three
Books on the Law of War and Peace) offered the occasion for elaborate
festivities and commemorating activities in and outside the Netherlands. The
anniversary was organized against the backdrop of a revival of interest in Grotius
as a trailblazer for international law among proponents of the international
‘peace through law’ movement, which went back to the Hague Peace Conferences
and was given new traction after the Great War.
In
the past few decades, international academic interest has widened beyond the
scope of international law to encompass the full extent of Grotius’ life,
thought and works across the disciplines. The mainstream narratives of Grotius
as ‘father of international law’ and visionary defender of international peace
and justice have given way to more nuanced readings of his life and work, as
well as his many receptions and revivals, against the changing patterns of
social, political and ethical ideas and values. In recent years, Grotius’ role
both as an actor in the Dutch imperialist enterprise and a defender of unity
and reconciliation among the Christian confessions have been highlighted. All
this solicits critical reconsiderations of De jure belli ac pacis and Grotius’
role in the history of international law.
The
major aim of the conference is to foster new narratives on the thought of
Grotius, in general legal theory as well as in international law against a the
backdrop of present-day rapid, fundamental changes that challenge the very
foundations of the modernist paradigm, of which Grotius may be considered a key
trailblazer. The core question of the academic
conference is to what extent Grotian thought about general legal theory and international
law is still relevant today, and what adaptations current foundational changes
to our world make necessary. In this context, discussion of the many
trajectories of reception, appropriation and reinterpretation of Grotius in
different times and places, offers a valuable, additional perspective.
Through
the conference ‘Grotian law and modernity at the dawn of a new age’, the
organizers want to stimulate debate on the constitutional impact of current
changes for the global legal order through the lens of a long-term historical
analysis. The speakers in the conference are invited to reach back to Grotius’
thought and work as a starting point for discussing the foundations of the
modern legal order of the past four centuries and the changes this is currently
undergoing. They are asked to use this long-term historical framework to make
sense of current upheavals and look for direction towards the future of law.
The
conference program falls into three parts (with parallel sessions).
Part I ‘Lineages of Grotian thought’ discusses the material and
ideological receptions, reinterpretations and appropriations of De jure
belli ac pacis at different times during the past four centuries. It
assembles a number of papers that trace the lineages, in terms of material
history or content, of Grotius’ ideas with regards to different branches of
legal theory or practical law. It looks to reviewing traditional, often
celebratory narratives of Grotius from the late nineteenth and twentieth
centuries from the perspective of a wide array of themes including political
and economic governance, human rights, imperialism or (in)equality.
Part
II ‘Modernity and the dawn of a new age: general theory of law and governance’
and Part III ‘Modernity and the dawn of a new age: international law and
governance’ address the question of the
significance of current changes for the constitution of a new global legal
order, using De jure belli ac pacis as a platform for discussing the
development, transformation and superseding of modern law.
Part
II concerns general questions of the
theory of law and governance.
Part
III pertains to specific questions of
public international law.
At
the end of the second day, an academic session will be organized for a wider
audience, with a key note speech and a panel discussion on the core topic of
the conference.
Invitation
to speakers
In
addition to three keynote speakers, the organizers invite twelve speakers for
each of the three thematic parts of the conference.
Candidates
are requested to send in an abstract of 250-400 words and short c.v. of max. 100
words to the general convener, Randall Lesaffer (lesaffer@tilburguniversity.edu) by 1 May 2024. Please mention your affiliation and indicate a
preference for one of the three conference themes.
The
event takes place in person without online presentations. The organization is
not in a position to fund accommodation or travel expenses and invites selected
speakers to search for funding themselves. Those selected speakers for whom
this is impossible, are requested to contact the general convener on this.
Propositions
will be assessed by the Organizing Committee and selected on the basis of the
quality of abstracts and the fit with the programme.
Part I ‘Lineages of Grotian thought’
Convener: Mark Somos
Keynote speaker: Martine van Ittersum
The material conditions of the production
and reception of De jure belli ac pacis form a neglected and highly
rewarding field of research. Recent studies of the printing history of various editions
have started to clarify Grotius’ own role in the revision and timing of new
editions; piracy and rivalry among publishers; the marketing strategy for each
edition; and the dissemination and movement of copies. The burgeoning study of
annotations that legal scholars, aristocrats, municipal and imperial
administrators, prominent politicians and thinkers have left behind in their
copies of De jure belli ac pacis is shedding new light on the hitherto
unseen history of this work’s real impact. Early insights into the lineages of
Grotian thought that only close attention to the surviving copies’ materiality
can provide include the intensity and ingenuity of the Catholic reception of De
jure belli ac pacis. Another set of discoveries that emerges from the
material heritage of De jure belli ac pacis reveals historical moments
of focused interest in specific passages of the text in response to crises that
previous historiography has never considered to be part of the book’s
reception, such as the breakup of the Iberian Union, nineteenth-century abolitionism,
or the start of World War I. Grounding the reception history of De jure
belli ac pacis in the book’s materiality is essential for recovering the
four centuries of its impact in full, from its earliest classroom use to its
latest invocation in front of an international tribunal, as well as for
reassessing Grotius’ role in the evolution of the laws of war, the relationship
between morality and law, sovereignty, natural rights, freedom of navigation and
imperialism.
Part I welcomes proposals for papers on
the various editions’ printing history, surviving annotations, evidence of the
book’s use in classrooms, in court and the corridors of power, and the broader relationship between the
material and intellectual receptions of De jure belli ac pacis. We thereby
expressly invite papers on receptions of and engagements with Grotius in
different parts of the world.
Part II ‘Modernity and the dawn of a new
age: general theory of law and governance’
Convener: Marc de
Wilde
Keynote speaker:
Annabel Brett
In De jure belli ac pacis, Grotius developed three ideas that have
been recognized as major innovations in legal theory. First of all, he
presented natural law as the moral foundation of both domestic and
international legal systems. Secondly, he revolutionized the traditional
understanding of natural law by focusing on the natural rights of individuals.
And thirdly, he distinguished between natural law and religious belief, arguing
that the rights of individuals had to be protected irrespective of religious differences.
With these ideas, Grotius stood at the cradle of the modernist paradigm of
legal theory which emphasized the need for a secular and universal legal order
based on individual rights. However, depending on the context in which
Grotius’s theory was applied, its meaning proved to be ambiguous. Thus,
Grotius’s concept of natural law was also used to justify imperialism and
colonialism, and it served to legitimize the practice of slavery. Moreover,
present-day challenges, such as climate change or the rise of artificial
intelligence, require us to reconsider the main assumptions behind Grotius’s
theory, such as his notion of the free will or the unlimited availability of
natural resources. The speakers are invited to reflect critically on Grotius’s
contribution to legal theory and its present-day relevance by presenting papers
on the following topics: the universality of natural law (or its limitations),
individual rights as foundation of the legal system (and its potential
downsides), the relation between natural law, imperialism and slavery, the
challenges new technologies pose to the free will and legal regulation, and the
state’s role in balancing individual rights and the public good (as, for
instance, in the case of climate change).
Part
III ‘Modernity and the dawn of a new
age: international law and governance’
Convener:
Eric De Brabandere
Keynote
speaker: Hilary Charlesworth
This
part pertains to specific questions of contemporary and future public
international law. The actual text of De jure belli ac pacis libri
tres is often neglected, given the wealth of secondary sources.
This part of the conference invites critique and examination of the potential
of De jure belli ac pacis as a text with contemporary
relevance. To this end, Part III invites papers that critically explore the
Grotian traditions and its potential impact on particularized problems of
contemporary international law. Of special interest are papers that adopt a
critical lens to the Grotian legacy in the sphere of international humanitarian
law and international criminal law. Critical analysis of the idea of a ‘Grotian
Moment’ and the mainstream progress narrative of international law is
invited. Analysis of Grotius’ work on the treatment of foreigners and
enemies (of all humankind or otherwise) is welcome, as are papers examining
Grotian legacy in the context of jus post bellum (the
transition from armed conflict to a just and sustainable peace). Ultimately,
this section of the conference hopes to imagine how Grotius’ great work could
be used to better manage the problems of, if not the next 400 years, at least
the next 40.
Speakers
are expected to turn in a draft paper before 1 June 2025. Papers will be
distributed to the participants in advance of the conference. Those papers
which pass peer review will be published in both the journal Grotiana (New
Series) as well as collected in a separate book with Brill.
Organizing
committee
Jeroen
Vervliet (Grotiana), chair
Eric
De Brabandere (Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, University of Leiden),
convener ‘International law and governance’
Randall
Lesaffer (Department of Public Law and Governance, Tilburg University &
Grotiana), general convener
Janne
Nijman (Department of Public International Law, University of Amsterdam)
Marc
de Wilde (Department of Jurisprudence, University of Amsterdam & Grotiana),
convener ‘General legal theory and governance’
Mark
Somos (Grotiana), convener ‘Lineages of Grotian thought’
Further
introduction to the conference theme
In
international law, the term ‘Grotian moments’ is sometimes used to indicate
times and occurrences of fundamental change in the constitution of the
international legal order. The phrase carries the implication that Grotius’ De
jure belli ac pacis was constitutive for the new international order that
emerged at the dawn of the modern age.
Grotius’
De jure belli ac pacis is undoubtedly one of the most iconic texts from
Western legal history.
While
this is widely recognized in relation to international law or natural law
jurisprudence, its relevance extends beyond the confines of international law into
that of law and governance at large. In many ways, Grotius’ major legal
treatise has been and remains a major source for imagining, articulating and
debating law as both the guarantor of individual autonomy and an instrument of
state policy under the paradigm of modernity.
The
Western paradigm of modern law came to full fruition during the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, the heyday of the sovereign nation-state. The paradigm of modern law may be caught under
its following core features: 1) the autonomy of the individual human being as
foundation for social order; 2) consent as the basis for the legal organization
of both private transactions and public authority; 3) the separation of a
private sphere of liberty from a sphere of public interest; 4) the
understanding of the role of public authority and law in terms of balancing
between individual autonomy and public interest; 5) the claim to exclusive
jurisdiction over law making and law enforcement by the state both in internal
and international relations; 6) the global expansion of this model in the
context of imperialism, colonization and decolonization.
De
jure belli ac pacis held no blueprint
for this modern law paradigm, but contained many building blocks, both great
and small. Although the question of justice in war stood at the heart of the
treatise, Grotius framed it in the context of a novel general theory of law,
and did so by addressing a plethora of fundamental issues of private,
constitutional and criminal law. Grotius’ reimagination of natural law in terms
of individual and individually enforceable rights preconfigured the
foundational role of the autonomy of the individual as the key constitutional
principle of the modern nation-state with its separation of a private from a
public sphere. His contract theory of the state and his equation of the natural
rights of the state with those of the individual allowed for the elevation of
the state to the sovereign creator of positive law. At the same time, his
acknowledgment of the autonomy of natural law from Christian religion allowed
to create a standard of justice that was said to derive from universal
principles of humanity but at the same time was laden with the inheritance of
hundreds of years of Christian and European intellectual tradition.
De
jure belli ac pacis does not just
stand at the foundations of modern law. For four hundred years it has retained
currency as a source of inspiration to argue for new turns and twists along the
path of the emergence, the maturation and the transformation of modern law. If
19th-century international lawyers hailed Grotius for having given
autonomy to international law as the preserve of the sovereign state, their 20th-century
successors have seen in him the remote trailblazer for the supremacy of the
international community over the state. In this sense, the relevance of
Grotius’ thought has proven resilient to many of the most fundamental changes
of the past four centuries and has survived several ‘Grotian moments’ so far.
The
two decades that have lapsed since the beginning of the 21st century
have witnessed tremendous and profound changes that challenge the very basis of
the modern law paradigm. The globalization of economic and social life together
with the empowerment of the individual and non-state agents have severely
weakened the claims of states to exclusive jurisdiction, furthering the erosion
of traditional state-based institutions and principles of democracy and rule of
law. The relative decline of the West and the resilience of authoritarianism question
the universalism that for the better part of two centuries has been part of the
Western paradigm of modernity. Climate change is putting a hard stop on the
belief in the unending possibilities of the growth of humankind and its
‘pursuit of happiness’ at the cost of the planet, while according to some the
rise of artificial intelligence challenges the very centrality of consent, free
will and individual autonomy.
The
400th anniversary of the first publication of Grotius’ De jure
belli ac pacis offers an excellent occasion to question the impact of
current global changes on the existent global order in terms of a paradigmatic
shift away from the modern understanding of law.
