(image: medal representing Grotius as "phenix of the fatherland" and "oracle of Delft", 1739; Germanisches Nationalmuseum/Europeana)
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.
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