Justice among Nations. A History of International Law - Stephen C. Neff

(backadmin) #1
578 Bibliographic Essay

Various writers in the fi eld have attracted the attention of scholars. Th ere is a vast
literature on Leibniz— scarcely surprising for such a polymath. On his contribution to
international law, see Janne Elisabeth Nijman, Th e Concept of International Legal Per-
sonality: An Inquiry into the History and Th eory of International Law (T. M. C. Asser
Press, 2004), 58– 80; and Tetsuya Toyoda, Th eory and Politics of the Law of Nations:
Po liti cal Bias in International Law Discourse of Seven German Court Councilors in the
Seventeenth and Eigh teenth Centuries (Martinus Nijhoff , 2011), 81– 101. Both of these
focus on his views on state sovereignty and international personality. See also J. Wal-
ter Jones, “Leibniz as International Lawyer,” 22 BYBIL 1– 10 (1945); and Paul Schrecker,
“Leibniz’s Principles of International Justice,” 7 J. Hist. Ideas 484– 98 (1946).
Wol ff has received comparatively little attention, especially in English— a refl ection
of his being overshadowed by a towering pre de ces sor (Leibniz) and successor (Kant).
For an overview of his philosophy generally, see Lewis White Beck, Early German
Philosophy: Kant and His Pre de ces sors (Harvard University Press, 1969), 256– 75. See
also Leonard Krieger, Th e German Idea of Freedom: History of a Po liti cal Tradition
(University of Chicago Press, 1957), 66– 71. On Wolff ’s views on international rela-
tions specifi cally, see Walter Schiff er, Th e Legal Community of Mankind: A Critical
Analysis of the Modern Concept of World Or ga ni za tion (Columbia University Press,
1954), 63– 78; and Arthur Nussbaum, A Concise History of the Law of Nations (2nd ed.;
Macmillan, 1954), 150– 56.
Kant, even more than Leibniz, has been the subject of a torrent of literature. For an
excellent overview of his moral philosophy in general, see J. B. Schneewind, “Auton-
omy, Obligation, and Virtue: An Overview of Kant’s Moral Philosophy,” in Paul Guyer
(ed .), Th e Cambridge Companion to Kant, 309– 41 (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
For the minute fraction of the writing on Kant that is particularly relevant to interna-
tional law, see Howard Willims and Ken Booth, “Kant: Th eorist beyond Limits,” in
Ian Clark and Iver B. Neumann (eds.), Classical Th eories of International Relations,
71– 98 (Macmillan, 1996); Georg Cavallar, Kant and the Th eory and Practice of Inter-
national Right (University of Wales Press, 1999); Charles Covell, Kant and the Law of
Peace: A Study in the Philosophy of International Law and International Relations
(Palgrave, 1998); Gustavo Gozzi, Diritti e civilità: Storia e fi losofi a del diritto inter-
nazionale (Il Mulino, 2010), 97– 130; Georg Cavallar, Imperfect Cosmopolis: Studies in
the History of International Legal Th eory and Cosmopolitan Ideas (University of Wales
Press, 2011), 64– 84; and Martin Wight, Four Seminal Th inkers in International Th e-
ory: Machiavelli, Grotius, Kant, and Mazzini (Oxford University Press, 2004), 63– 87.
On the relation between Kant and Hobbes, see Richard Tuck, Th e Rights of War and
Peace: Po liti cal Th ought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant (Ox ford
University Press, 1999), 207– 25. On Kant’s proposal for perpetual peace in par tic u lar,
see Hemleben, Plans for World Peace, 87– 95.
Other writers have, so far, received much less attention. On Bynkershoek, see Kinji
Akashi, Cornelius van Bynkershoek: His Role in the History of International Law (Klu-
wer, 1998). Nussbaum, Concise History, gives brief but useful accounts of the contri-

Free download pdf