In Full Flower 309Renault was the son of a bookseller from Autun. He studied literature at
the University of Dijon, and then law at the University of Paris. Aft er re-
turning to Dijon as a lecturer in Roman law and commercial law, he trans-
ferred to Paris in 1873 to become a professor of criminal law. He entered
international law largely by accident. A vacancy in the area arose in the
Paris faculty, which Renault agreed to fi ll on a temporary basis. But he con-
tinued teaching it for the rest of his career, right up to his death in 1918. He
became a professor in the subject in 1881 (although still continuing to teach
commercial law, even coauthoring a nine- volume treatise on the topic).
Th e two men shared a number of attributes. Both were longtime advisers
to their respective foreign ministries (Rus sia and France), representing their
countries at a number of conferences over the years. Both combined this
task with university teaching. Both were very active in international arbitra-
tions, too. Renault served as an arbitrator on six occasions, and Martens on
fi ve. For his ser vices in this area, Martens earned the sobriquet of the “chief
justice of Christendom.”
Th ey shared a notable intellectual feature as well, in that neither was dog-
matically tied to mainstream positivist thought. Th ey were both eclectics. It
has been observed that Martens showed some passing sympathy with liber-
alism. In his treatise, he expressed strong criticism of both positivism and
natural law and gave some signs of an affi nity with solidarist thought. In-
ternational law, he asserted, was now in the pro cess of entering a third age
(a ft er the natural-law and the positive periods), in which “the solidarity of
interests” of states would loom increasingly large. He insisted that the basis
of the emerging new law must not be the absolute in de pen dence of states,
but rather “the idea of the international community according to which each
State is tied to the other States by interests and common rights and forms
with them an organic whole notwithstanding its in de pen dence.”
Renault is diffi cult to pigeonhole in intellectual terms, since, unlike Mar-
tens, he never produced a substantial treatise on international law. But his
outlook was basically Grotian, in the pragmatic tradition of Zouche and G.
F. von Martens. He carefully avoided fully committing himself exclusively
to either positivism or natural law, preferring a blend of the two. A resolute
nonutopian, he insisted that international law must be rooted in the events
and relationships of the real world— but also that it must be shaped and in-
formed by reason and by the critical spirit of natural law.