The Just War in International Law

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It is hardly possible to exaggerate the contribution which Hugo Grotius made to the foundation of international law as a subject in its own right, worthy of academic study, distinct from moral theology, and with immediate practical applications in the relations among rulers. Grotius was a great innovator, not because he disregarded the work of his predecessors and contemporaries, but because he brought their disparate work into coherent relationship. He was a man of extraordinary scholarship, and in his work on the law of war and peace — De jure belli ac pacis (1625)1— he cites or quotes from the works of Greek, Roman, and Jewish classical writers: Homer, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Livy, Ovid, Seneca, both Plinys, Josephus, Plutarch, and Tacitus. He quotes from fifty-two of the Bible’s seventy-five books, as well as from the Apocrypha. He was fully acquainted with the writings of the early fathers of the Church: Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Origen, Lactantius, and Saints Ambrose, Jerome, Chrysostom, and Augustine. He was also steeped in the writings of the schoolmen and quotes Thomas Aquinas, Cajetan, Domingo de Soto, and Luis Molina; and he mentions in particular that among the theological works he had studied were those of Vitoria (p. 22). He refers more than once to the writings of his Spanish Catholic contemporary Suárez, and he tells us that he had obtained the works of Ayala and Gentili.KeywordsInternational Criminal CourtInternational CrimeGeneva ConventionFair TrialHague ConventionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.