Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Use of Vattel in the American Law of Nations

2012; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 106; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5305/amerjintelaw.106.3.0547

2161-7953

Brian Richardson,

American Constitutional Law and Politics

Although careful scholarly treatment of the history of international law is now thriving, within U.S. courts that history now begins with one eighteenth-century treatise published in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, in 1758 and published in translation for modern readers under the aegis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 1916. This treatise is Emer de Vattel’s Droit des gens ou principes de la loi naturelle, appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains . My aim in this article is to appraise the elevation of Vattel to vaunted originalist heights in U.S. law. The claim that Vattel’s theory of the law of nations completely represents how the Founding Fathers (Founders) understood the law of nations should be rejected as a matter of history.