International Law

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                                    International Law

130.During the 17th Century, the Catholic Church had failed to keep Europe unified, so national bodies began to form into national countries and Christianity lost its direct influence in national governments. At the beginning of the 17th Century, several generalizations could be made about the political situation: 1.Self-governing, autonomous states existed. 2.Almost all of them were governed by monarchies. 1.England had a constitutional monarchy. 2.Not all despots were hereditary: the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Poland were elected. 3.Switzerland, the Netherlands, and many Italian city-states were republics. 3.After the the 7 Years' War, there was relative stability in Europe for 130 years (until the 1789 French Revolution). 4.Land, wealth, trading rights, and monopolizing the new lands were the topics of war

131.International law was developed to deal the formation of the powerful states.

132.Emeric Cruce (1590-1648: 17th) was a French monk who came up with the idea of having representatives of all of the countries meet in one place and discuss their problems so as to avoid war and create more peace. He wrote this idea in The New Cyneas (1623: 17th) and it it he chose Venice to be the selected city for all of the representatives to meet and he suggested that the Pope take the highest rank there. He also said that armies should be abolished and called for a world court. Two years later, Hugo Grotius's On the Law of War and Peace appeared.

133.Hugo Grotius (1583-1645: 17th) was a Dutch humanist and a jurist and he is considered the founder of international law.. He became a lawyer when he was 15 years old (and got sentenced to life in prison after going against Maurice of Nassau son of William of Orange in a trial, but he escaped in fled to Paris). In France, he wrote On the Law of War and Peace (1625, 1631 -definitive: 17th), which was the first definitive text on international law. He drew much of its content from the Bible and classical history. He did not condemn war as only a political tool, considering cases in which war is appropriate. He further developed the just war theory. A just war fits certain criteria: 1.It can be to repel an invastion. 2.It can be to punish an insult to God. 3.There has to be a just cause. 4.It has to be declared by the proper authorities. 5.It must possess moral intention. 6.It must have a chance of success. 7.It must abstain from brutal practices. 8.Its end result must be proportional to the means used.

134.The statesmen of the time believed no nation could escape war, so they prepared for it.

135.Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679: 17th) was a political philosopher who moved to France after his ideas raised antagonism from Parliament. In France, he tutored the exiled King of Scotland Charles II. His materialistic views alienated the Catholic clergy, so he went back to England, where he lived until his death. In his book the Leviathan (1651: 17th), which was a revision of a previous work, he outlined his political philosophy by stating that men are naturally selfishly individualistic and that their fear of a violent death is the principal motive behind their support of an absolute sovereign. He believed that the sovereign should be absolute and that a monarchy was the most efficient form of a sovereign leader (he came to this conclusion after living through the English civil war and seeing the problems of Cromwell's “Commonwealth”). He believed that temporal powers should always be above ecclesiastical powers.

136.King Henry IV's Chief Minister, the Duke of Sully, proposed the founding of an alliance of the European nations that was to meet to arbitrate issues and wage war not between themselves but collectively on the Ottoman Turks, and he called it the Grand Design (17th), but was never established.

137.People began to question absolutism.