"In 1662 Pufendorf was appointed to the first modern professorship in natural law (at the University of Heidelberg). In 1670 he became professor of natural law at the University of Lund in Sweden. First published in 1672, this is his principle work and a landmark in the history of natural and international law. Beginning with a consideration of fundamental legal ideas and their various divisions, Pufendorf proceeded to a discussion of the validity of customs, the doctrines of necessity and innate human reason. The work is significant in part because it developed principles introduced by Grotius and Hobbes. Unlike Hobbes, Pufendorf argued that peace, not war, was the state of nature, and he proposed that international law was not restricted to Christendom." -- Lawbook Exchange.

Twelve international scholars offer innovative studies of the law of nations from the Peace of Westphalia to the Enlightenment. The focus is on little known contexts and sources, and on novel interpretations of classics in the field.

Christian Thomasius's natural jurisprudence is essential to understanding the origins of the Enlightenment in Germany, where his importance was comparable to that of John Locke's in England. First published in 1688, Thomasius's Institutionum jurisprudentiae divinae (Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence) attempted to draw a clear distinction between natural and revealed law and to emphasize that human reason was able to know the precepts of natural law without the aid of Scripture. Thomasius also argued that his orthodox Lutheran opponents had failed to understand this distinction and thereby had confused reason and Scripture. In addition to the Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence, this volume contains significant selections from his Fundamenta juris naturae et gentium (Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations), published in 1705. In Foundations Thomasius significantly revised the theory he had put forward in the Institutes, and much of the Foundations therefore is a paragraph-by-paragraph commentary on his earlier ideas. These works are a companion to Thomasius's Essays on Church, State, and Politics, and together they provide the first-ever English presentation of this preeminent German thinker.

The US Senator from New York offers an insightful account of American attitudes toward international law from the founding of the Republic to the present day. He reveals Americans to be generally well-disposed toward a law of nations, notwithstanding the contrary values of the US government over the last decade. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR