Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina, L'eterno ritorno del Droit des gens di Emer de Vattel (secc. XVIII-XIX), May 2017
Global Perspectives on Legal History 8
With “L'eterno
ritorno del Droit des gens di Emer de
Vattel (secc. XVIII-XIX)” by Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina, the Max Planck Institute for European Legal
History presents the newest publication in its book series "Global
Perspectives on Legal History".
Global Perspectives on Legal History is a book series edited and
published by the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt am
Main, Germany.
As its
title suggests, the series is designed to advance the scholarly research of
legal historians worldwide who seek to transcend the established boundaries of
national legal scholarship that typically sets the focus on a single, dominant
modus of normativity and law. The series aims to privilege studies dedicated to
reconstructing the historical evolution of normativity from a global
perspective.
It includes
monographs, editions of sources, and collaborative works. All titles in the
series are available both as premium print-on-demand and in the open-access format.
Prof. Dr. iur. Elisabetta
Fiocchi Malaspina is Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich
L'eterno ritorno del Droit des gens di Emer de Vattel (secc. XVIII-XIX)
L'impatto
sulla cultura giuridica in prospettiva globale
Global
Perspectives on Legal History 8
Frankfurt
am Main: Max Planck Institute for European Legal History 2017. 364 p., € 17,69
D
ISBN:
978-3-944773-07-0
The numerous editions and early translations
produced throughout the eighteenth century enabled the broad dissemination of
Emer de Vattel’s juridical-political work Droit des gens. This book
investigates the global impact of the Droit des gens with regard to the
different political realities, the historical and legal contexts as well as the
attempts, mechanisms and strategies used to put these ideas into practice and
establish new doctrine between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Droit des gens
had an extremely diverse impact, owing to its varied reception in different
political situations, historical and legal contexts, and attempts at practical
and theoretical implementation. The fact that Vattel’s book was a point of
reference for a considerable number of jurists and politicians further
demonstrates its authority in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The question naturally
arises whether the continuous references to the work may be regarded as
«typical citations of style», simply confined to referencing Vattel’s thought,
or whether they are a clear sign of a deeper significance; one springing
directly from the characteristics of the Droit des gens, with its
capacity to organise and regulate the State in its domestic and international
relations.
The dissemination of the Droit
des gens is reconstructed via a broad overview of the dynamics that
actually underpinned the use of the treatise, ranging from its influence on
political power in domestic and foreign affairs to its use as a guidebook for
diplomats and consuls, and even its use as a teaching manual.
Co-existing in Vattel’s
work are several topics—the legislative, the political and the social—which are
developed independently of one another, yet are part of one unified framework.
The book aims to bring together a study of the first publication in 1758 of
Vattel’s Droit des gens, its constant interaction with subsequent
editions, translations and annotated versions carried out by jurists in the 19th
century its critical reception (both positive and negative) in relation to the
more complex legislative contexts.
The publishing history of
the Droit des gens will be accompanied by the methodological
aspect—closely bound to the need to write a global legal history—in which
translation, in the broader sense of the term, plays a key role. Concepts of
fashion and modernity are examined within the context of the practical and
theoretical legal entanglements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
thanks to the voices of distinguished jurists and politicians who made use of the
Droit des gens and who translated and annotated it, thereby encouraging
the assimilation—not always unadulterated—of Vattel’s thinking.
