The Decline of the French Jurists as Political Theorists, 1660-1789

Alberico Gentili’s De iure belli: An Absolutist’s Attempt to Reconcile the jus gentium and the Reason of State Tradition

“…As Comparato explains, 'behind the façade of deference and virtue which [late sixteenth century] writers presented, contemporary politics continued to reflect Guicciardini's maxim that "one cannot keep a state according to conscience"'. 100 became 'sufficiently comprehensive to provide ready-made justifications for the many measures… believed to be required by political necessity', 103 foreign policy became an even more pressing topic. This is not to say that full internal sovereignty was achieved before or faster than external sovereignty.…”

“…If anything, the process went the other way around, with sovereigns suddenly achieving external sovereignty after the collapse of the unity of the Latin West, while internally, struggles for power continued well into the eighteenth and even the nineteenth century. 104 The point here is that in terms of legal rules, the basis for how the state would operate internally under an absolute sovereign was fairly clear, while by contrast, foreign policy 'was subject to no generally recognized principles, legal or moral', 105 and thus required the development of some clear guidance for sovereigns.…”

The naming of powers

“…The centrality of the concept of public law may make this seem a thoroughly legalistic idea, and it is often considered under the rubric of the history of international law (e.g. Grewe, 2000), but in fact jurists were not always central to its evolution, and it may be more accurate to see it as an encroachment into the legal sphere by the politiques and philosophes, particularly in France (Church, 1967; jurists continued to play a more prominent, but not exclusive, role in the field in Germany: see especially Stolleis, 1988). This development was fuelled by the formation of several 'political academies' that were intended to train statesmen and diplomats: they often had only a passing interest in the traditional works within the natural law and juristic tradition, and relied instead more heavily on a combination of modern history and collections of treaties and other contemporary public documents for their educational practice (Keene, 2008;Keens-Soper, 1972;Klaits, 1971).…”

Les Traitts DDUtrecht Et La Hiirarchie Des Normes (The Treaties of Utrecht and the Hierarchy of Norms)

“…Cette loi est regardée comme l'ouvrage […] de Dieu 22 . » Traditionnellement, la recherche en histoire du droit international se concentre sur la doctrine 23 et les traités 24 , à partir des travaux préparatoires ou de la correspondance et de mémoires publiés 25 . D'un point de vue classique, une hiérarchie entre les traités d'Utrecht et les autres actes internationaux serait difficile à établir, puisque les engagements contractuels entre souverains se valent tous.…”