scholarly journals Grotius’ theory of natural law

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 436-457
Author(s):  
Jelena Govedarica
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
The State ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Heuristic Principle ◽  
The Way

After analyzing Grotius? formulation of the state of nature and natural law, social contract and international law, the author places emphasis on two insights. First, that a certain heuristic principle plays a central role in Grotius? argument - the analogy between individuals and states in the state of nature. Second, his firm belief that within the international framework the protection of natural law of people and communities comes before respect for state sovereignty. The author will argue that morally unacceptable implications of these characteristics of Grotius? theory, when we take into account the way in which he defines the rights of punishment and property, are in fact legitimation of interventionism and colonialism. The author will also argue that Grotius initiated an influential tradition in international law, characterized by a lack of clear boundaries between legal and moral norms.

16. Rousseau

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Boucher
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Private Property ◽  
The State ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Short Biography ◽  
Civic Virtues

This chapter examines Jean-Jacques Rousseau's political thought. It first provides a short biography of Rousseau before discussing varying interpretations of his ideas, suggesting that, because of his emphasis upon civic virtues and freedom as lack of an insidious form of dependence, the republican tradition best reflects Rousseau's concerns. It then considers Rousseau's distinctive contribution to the idea of the state of nature, noting that the springs of action in his state of nature are not reason are self-preservation and sympathy. It also explores Rousseau's views on private property, social contract, inequality, natural law and natural rights, democracy, religion, and censorship. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Rousseau's concern with freedom and dependence, and how the related issues of slavery and women were relevant for him.

Legitimacy

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
The State ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
International Courts ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
State Legitimacy ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Supranational Institutions

This collection brings together scholars of jurisprudence and political theory to probe the question of ‘legitimacy’. It offers discussions that interrogate the nature of legitimacy, how legitimacy is intertwined with notions of statehood, and how legitimacy reaches beyond the state into supranational institutions and international law. Chapter I considers benefit-based, merit-based, and will-based theories of state legitimacy. Chapter II examines the relationship between expertise and legitimate political authority. Chapter III attempts to make sense of John Rawls’s account of legitimacy in his later work. Chapter IV observes that state sovereignty persists, since no alternative is available, and that the success of the assortment of international organizations that challenge state sovereignty depends on their ability to attract loyalty. Chapter V argues that, to be complete, an account of a state’s legitimacy must evaluate not only its powers and its institutions, but also its officials. Chapter VI covers the rule of law and state legitimacy. Chapter VII considers the legitimation of the nation state in a post-national world. Chapter VIII contends that legitimacy beyond the state should be understood as a subject-conferred attribute of specific norms that generates no more than a duty to respect those norms. Chapter IX is a reply to critics of attempts to ground the legitimacy of suprastate institutions in constitutionalism. Chapter X examines Joseph Raz’s perfectionist liberalism. Chapter XI attempts to bring some order to debates about the legitimacy of international courts.

Authorizing Judgment

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas John Casson
Keyword(s):  
Political Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Abstract Theory ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Tangible Support ◽  
Heuristic Device ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

This chapter illustrates how Locke's Second Treatise can be read as a revolutionary call for subjects to employ this new notion of probable judgment. In order to teach his readers to be active, critical, and even revolutionary members of the polity, Locke sets out to convince them not only that they are capable of making crucial determinations concerning the limits of political power, but also that they are obligated to do so. His account of the state of nature is not simply a heuristic device illustrating an abstract theory of government, but an attempt to provide tangible support to his contention that individuals have a natural right of judgment. Along the way he seeks to guide his readers in the proper exercise of this capacity by showing them the reasonableness of limiting their judgment to the concrete, visceral experiences of neediness and injury.

Coleridge’s Exile from the Social Contract, 1795–1829

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoe Beenstock
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
Breaking Point ◽  
General Will ◽  
Social Crisis ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Better Than

Coleridge wrote frequently about Rousseau throughout his varied career. His early lectures and letters draw on Rousseau’s critique of luxury and frequently allude to the general will, depicting Rousseau as a Christ-like figure. Coleridge’s subsequent disappointment with Pantisocracy led him to reject Rousseau and the social contract. Comparing Rousseau to Luther in The Friend, Coleridge argues that Rousseau’s unhappiness arises from a conflict between an age of individualism and an ongoing need for community. According to Coleridge, poetry tolerates this conflict better than philosophy. In ‘Reflections on Having Left a Place of Retirement’ Coleridge suggests that social retreat offers illusory solace from war and social crisis. He critiques the state of nature, sympathy, and even religion for failing to balance the self with its environment. Thematically and formally The Rime of the Ancient Mariner explores this crisis in cohering systems. Through the mariner’s relationship to the albatross, the wedding that frames the poem, and episodes of the supernatural that disrupt the ballad form, Coleridge defines a breaking point between the individual and general wills.

Part VI Refugee Rights and Realities, Ch.50 Non-refoulement

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathew Penelope
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Asylum Seeker ◽  
Deep Structure ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
The State ◽  
State System ◽  
Refugee Convention ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Legal Fictions ◽  
The Way

This chapter highlights the most fundamental of all obligations owed to refugees—that of non-refoulement. The raison d’être of the obligation continues to provoke debate about the validity of the lines drawn between refugees, other beneficiaries of the obligation, and other migrants, and the way the purported provider of surrogate protection—the State—is implicated in the production of forced migration. That background or deep structure of the State system assists in explaining the phenomenon explored in the chapter: the interaction between shrinking and expansive approaches to non-refoulement. The chapter first outlines the sources of the obligation, noting the obligation’s place in the Refugee Convention and other treaties as well as its status as customary international law, and the corresponding beneficiaries of the obligation. It then examines the scope of the obligation, with emphasis on States’ attempts to divest their responsibilities through legal fictions and extraterritorial immigration enforcement. The chapter also discusses the concept of constructive or disguised refoulement—that is, when an asylum seeker spontaneously leaves the country of asylum as a result of their treatment in that country.

At the Crossroads: Justus Lipsius and the Early Modern Development of International Law

2007 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
HALVARD LEIRA
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
International Law ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Modern Development ◽  
The Many ◽  
Late Renaissance ◽  
The Way

Justus Lipsius (1547–1606) was among the most famed intellectuals in his time, but was largely forgotten during the Enlightenment. Intellectually, he stood at an important crossroads, his thought incorporating both late Renaissance traits and precursors of the early modern age. In this article I give a brief intellectual background to Lipsius's thought before concentrating on his thought regarding the lawful interaction between polities, with a focus on lawful government, dissimulation, war, and empire. I then detail the way in which Lipsian thought critically informed later theory and practice. It contained an eclectic mix of divine law, natural law, and positive human law, with some elements borrowed and popularized from earlier writers and others being more original. In the end, his work stands out both as an important inspiration for later theorists and practitioners, and as an example of the many idiosyncrasies and possible trajectories that early international law could have adopted.

“A Trespass against the Whole Species”: Universal Crime and Sovereign Founding in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 560-585
Author(s):  
Sinja Graf
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Political ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Creation

This essay theorizes how the enforcement of universal norms contributes to the solidification of sovereign rule. It does so by analyzing John Locke’s argument for the founding of the commonwealth as it emerges from his notion of universal crime in the Second Treatise of Government. Previous studies of punishment in the state of nature have not accounted for Locke’s notion of universal crime which pivots on the role of mankind as the subject of natural law. I argue that the dilemmas specific to enforcing the natural law against “trespasses against the whole species” drive the founding of sovereign government. Reconstructing Locke’s argument on private property in light of universal criminality, the essay shows how the introduction of money in the state of nature destabilizes the normative relationship between the self and humanity. Accordingly, the failures of enforcing the natural law require the partitioning of mankind into separate peoples under distinct sovereign governments. This analysis theorizes the creation of sovereign rule as part of the political productivity of Locke’s notion of universal crime and reflects on an explicitly political, rather than normative, theory of “humanity.”

The Plurality of States and the World Order of Reason

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Dellavalle
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Social Order ◽  
World Order ◽  
The State ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

This chapter argues that Hegel can be regarded as the philosopher who was the first to pave the way to a new paradigm of order and, thus, also to a new idea of the relation between the state and international law. Hegel would not only conceive order as a ‘system’—which emerges clearly from the investigation of the deep connection between his interpretation of international law and relations and the broader context of his philosophy—but this ‘system’ would also be something new within the horizon of the patterns of social order. Indeed, two elements of a new paradigm are at least sketched in Hegel’s philosophy: the polyarchic setting of order, and its dialectic (or maybe even communicative) understanding.

The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History, 1800-2000

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Contract ◽  
Political History ◽  
The State ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Methodological Innovation ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Way

The two centuries after 1800 witnessed a series of sweeping changes in the way in which Britain was governed, the duties of the state, and its role in the wider world. Powerful processes—from the development of democracy to the changing nature of the social contract, war, and economic dislocation—have challenged, and at times threatened to overwhelm, both governors and governed. Such shifts have also posed problems for the historians who have researched and written about Britain’s past politics. This volume shows the ways in which political historians have responded, and provides a snapshot of a field which has long been at the forefront of conceptual and methodological innovation within historical studies. It comprises thirty-three thematic essays written by leading and emerging scholars in the field. Collectively, these essays assess and rethink the nature of modern British political history itself, and suggest avenues and questions for future research. The Oxford Handbook of Modern British Political History thus provides a unique resource for those who wish to understand Britain’s political past and a thought-provoking ‘long view’ for those interested in current political challenges.

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