ANTIQUARIAN LAW –

IN LATIN. (Translated to On the Law of War and Peace in English)

This seminal text by Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) outlines just war theory, a concept used throughout history to make conflict fair and just.

The theory is used heavily in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

It is a foundational text of international law and international relations.

Grotius rejects bans on war, separates natural law from religious law, and develops a philosophy on how nations should interact even if God does not exist to govern morality.

 De Iure Belli ac Pacis libri tres (English: On the Law of War and Peace: Three books) is a work in Latin, written by Hugo Grotius and published in 1625 in Paris, on the legal status of war.

It is now regarded as a foundational work in international law. Its content owed much to Spanish theologians of the previous century, particularly Francisco de Vitoria and Francisco Suarez, working in the Catholic tradition of natural law.

It is his most lasting work, begun in Loevestein State prison and published during his exile in Paris.

It is a monumental effort, aiming to restrain conflicts between nations and religions on the basis of a broad moral consensus.

Book I advances his conception of war and of natural justice, arguing that there are some circumstances in which war is justifiable.

• Book II identifies three ‘just causes’ for war: self-defence, reparation of injury, and punishment; Grotius considers a wide variety of circumstances under which these rights of war apply, and when they do not.
• Book III takes up the question of which rules govern the conduct of war once it has begun; influentially, Grotius argued that all parties to war are bound by such rules, whether their cause is just or not.
• Of all his numerous works De Jure Belli ac Pacis will always be considered Grotius’s magnum opus, the work upon which his reputation most solidly rests.
• “The distinction between religion and law or morality is not clearly made, but Grotius’ principle of an immutable law, which God can no more alter than a mathematical axiom, was the first expression of the droit naturel, the natural law which exercised the great political theorists of the eighteenth century, and is the foundation of modern international law” (Carter and Muir).
•  Our 1712 copy includes Mare Liberum, or Freedom of the Seas (1609), Grotius’s influential treatise on maritime law and the right of free navigation.
•  As indicated by its title, Grotius’s study is in three parts, designated “three books” (Libri Tres).
•  pp. 946 + index. Leatherbound with very acceptable signs of 300 years of age. (Small prev. ownership name on title page.)
•  Please request supplementary images of this listing.
•  Uncertified provenance: Belonged to judge at the International Court of Justice, Peace Palace The Hague  Netherlands.
   RARE AND DESIRABLE