BOOK: Sigrid BOYSEN, Die postkoloniale Konstellation - Natürliche Ressourcen und das Völkerrecht der Moderne (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2020). ISBN 978-3-16-157564-8, 99.00 EUR

  

(Source: Mohr Siebeck)

Mohr Siebeck has published a new book on post-colonial international environmental law.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Die Begründung des internationalen Umweltrechts suchen die meisten in der Ortlosigkeit seines Gegenstands: Die ökologische Frage kann im Alleingang souveräner Staaten nicht bewältigt werden. Die etwa im Klimaschutzrecht evidenten regulatorischen Probleme lassen sich hiernach nur durch mehr Verrechtlichung und Konstitutionalisierung lösen. Doch das internationale Umweltrecht ist keineswegs ortlos, sondern hat eine sehr konkrete Geographie. Es ist keine Überwindung des Staatenvölkerrechts, sondern die Ausgestaltung der zentralen weltpolitischen Verschiebung im 20. Jahrhundert – der Auflösung des klassischen Imperialismus. Sigrid Boysen rekonstruiert die Begriffe und Institute des heutigen internationalen Umweltrechts genealogisch. Was einst dazu diente, die handelspolitischen Unsicherheiten nach Ablösung der kolonialen Herrschaft zu stabilisieren, teilt die Erde auch heute ein in industrialisierte Zonen und deren äußere Natur.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sigrid Boysen Geboren 1972; Studium der Rechtswissenschaft in Göttingen, Bristol und Hamburg; 2005 Promotion; 2018 Habilitation; seit 2014 Professorin für Öffentliches Recht, Völker- und Europarecht an der Helmut-Schmidt-Universität.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2361-0162

 

More info here

(source: ESCLH Blog)

ARTICLE: Hannah DAWSON, "The Normativity of Nature in Pufendorf and Locke" (Historical Journal LXIII (2020), 3, 528-558

(image: John Locke; Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Abstract:

At the beginning of De jure naturae et gentium (1672), Samuel von Pufendorf proposed a radical dichotomy between nature and morality. He was followed down this arid path by his great admirer John Locke. This article begins by exploring their descriptions of this dichotomy, examining the ways in which human animals were supposed to haul themselves out of the push and pull of the mechanistic world in order to become free moral agents. The article then argues that bubbling up from within this principal account of morality is an alternative account according to which virtue seems to infuse nature, thereby blurring the lines between obligation and motivation, and refiguring the character of moral and political agency. In uncovering this refiguration, I highlight the importance of Aristotelianism and Stoicism for Pufendorf and Locke, suggest continuities rather than breaks between the natural lawyers of the seventeenth century and the theorists of moral sentiment of the next, and gesture towards a hitherto underappreciated discourse in early modern thought: the normativity of nature.

Read more here. 

DATABASE and CALL FOR CONTRIBUTORS: Kund HAAKONSSEN, Frank GUNERT & Diethelm KLIPPEL (eds)., Natural Law 1625-1850 (University of Erfurt/University of Jena)

(image source: Uni Jena)

Description:

The Natural Law Database is an open-ended, collaborative biographical and bibliographical knowledge reservoir of early modern natural law scholars from Europe and beyond. All contributions are peer-reviewed. The database is a part of the international research network Natural Law 1625-1850: An International Project and has the purpose of creating a knowledge hub, where any researcher or student easily can access and explore the world of early modern - mainly academic - natural law.
The Natural Law Database is based on the principle of collaboration and open-endedness. This means that the database project does not have a defined end-date since it is continuously expanding with new information, digitisations and expert commentaries. Since the project covers Europe (and beyond) for more than two centuries, the database also relies upon an active participation from the research community in order to grow. The populating of the database is a collaborative and international enterprise, in the sense that anyone anywhere can contribute and is encouraged to do so.

Call for contributors:

In other words, we need your help to develop the database and keep it up-to-date. For further information see How to contribute?

Full database presentation here.

(source: Uni Jena)

BOOK: Simone ZURBUCHEN (ed.), The Law of Nations and Natural Law 1625-1800 [Early Modern Natural Law; 1] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2019), ISBN 978-90-04-38420-0. OPEN ACCESS, 26 SEP 2019

(image source: Brill)

Book abstract:

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.

Table of contents:
Introduction 
  Simone Zurbuchen 

Part 1 
Teaching the Law of Nations 
1 Natural Law for the Nobility? The Law of Nature and Nations at the Erlangen Ritterakademie (1701–1741) 
  Katharina Beiergroesslein and Iris von Dorn 
2 Serving Danish Foreign Policy: Andreas Hojer’s De eo quod iure belli licet in minores (1735) 
  Mads Langballe Jensen 
3 The Law of Nations at the Naval Academy in Copenhagen around 1800: the Lectures of Christian Krohg 
  Thor Inge Rørvik 
4 The Law of Nations in German historia literaria and Encyclopaedias in the Eighteenth Century 
  Frank Grunert 

Part 2 
The Law of Nations from the Peace of Westphalia to the Enlightenment 
5 Pufendorf on the Law of Sociality and the Law of Nations 
  Kari Saastamoinen 
6 The International Political Thought of Johann Jacob Schmauss and Johann Gottlieb Heineccius: Natural Law, Interest, History and the Balance of Power 
  Peter Schröder 
7 Men, Monsters and the History of Mankind in Vattel’s Law of Nations 
  Pärtel Piirimäe 
8 Guarantee and Intervention: the Assessment of the Peace of Westphalia in International Law and Politics by Authors of Natural Law and of Public Law, c. 1650–1806 
  Patrick Milton 

Part 3 
The Law of Nations and the ‘École romande du droit naturel’ 
9 Born to Rule: Burlamaqui and Rousseau on the Education of Princes 
  Lisa Broussois 
10 Defining the Law of Nations: the École romande du droit naturel and the Lausanne Edition of Grotius’ De jure belli ac pacis (1751–1752) 
  Simone Zurbuchen 
11 Vattel’s Doctrine of the Customary Law of Nations between Sovereign Interests and the Principles of Natural Law 
  Francesca Iurlaro 
12 The Circulation of the École romande du droit naturel in Eighteenth-Century Italy 
  Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina 

(source: Brill)