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Wednesday, 23 May 2018 - 5.15pm
Location: 
Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, Finley Library

Lecture summary: This paper sets out a key distinction in Grotius’ De Iure Belli ac Pacis (The Rights of War and Peace, 1625) that is often overlooked in the mainstream historiography. This is between two forms of sovereign entity: the civitas (state) and regnum (patrimonial kingdom). The paper argues that these two forms of sovereign entity should not be understood as binary alternatives, but constitutional building blocks that could combine to describe a wide range of constitutional configurations in Grotius’ scheme of global legal order. For example, the regnum provided Grotius with a model to account for the way in which civitates could hold imperial possessions. To present this distinction, the paper also delves into Grotius’ account of the state of nature – or virtual lack thereof – to make the case that Grotius does not present a strong boundary between the pre-civic and civic condition. In this way, Grotius could account for diversity in the particular historical experience of each people, rather than shoehorn the constitutional identity of all sovereign entities into restrictive theoretical models. This in turn gave his account of the sovereign entity real-world purchase.

For a copy of the paper (available one week in advance), or to join the seminar mailing list, please contact md718@cam.ac.uk.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER : Dr Simpson is a Junior Fellow, Harvard University Society of Fellows.

This session is part of the Legal Histories beyond the State work-in-progress seminar series.

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