Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-495rp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-06T09:10:08.346Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The philosophy of international law: Suárez, Grotius and epigones

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 January 2010

Extract

Francisco Suárez, “the prince of modern jurists”, was accused by some of being a great anti-monarchist, even the first regicide, because he was the first “convinced and avowed republican”.

He incorporated Platonist, Aristotelian, Augustinian and Thomist ontology, metaphysics and theodicy within a legal framework; in urisprudence, he introduced the world of ideas into the material world; his discourse on law is valid for his own day and for all time. In dealing with abstract questions, he developed a philosophy of law that is applicable to concrete situations.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © International Committee of the Red Cross 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 IRRC, No. 290, 0910 1992, pp. 416433.Google Scholar

2 See my article, “The Spanish School of the new law of nations”, in IRRC, No. 290, 0910 1992 Google Scholar, in which I wrote (p. 431), “Vitoria and Suarez were the founders of the philosophy underlying all law, Vitoria for one branch of law, Suárez for law in general”.

3 Confessions, Book IX.

4 Cicero was also the first to refer to “jus bellicum, fidesque jurisjurandi”, in De Offlciis, Book III, chapter XXIX, a locution related to “pacta sunt servanda”.