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Rewriting the History of the Law of Nations: How James Brown Scott Made Francisco de Vitoria the Founder of International Law

Rewriting the History of the Law of Nations: How James Brown Scott Made Francisco de Vitoria the Founder of International Law

Author: Paolo Amorosa
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198849377
Published In: September 2019
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

List Price: RM807.30

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Description
Contents

Details

In the interwar years, international lawyer James Brown Scott wrote a series of works on the history of his discipline.

He made the case that the foundation of modern international law rested not, as most assumed, with the seventeenth-century Dutch thinker Hugo Grotius, but with sixteenth-century Spanish theologian Francisco de Vitoria. Far from being an antiquarian assertion, the Spanish origin narrative placed the inception of international law in the context of the discovery of America, rather than in the European wars of religion.

The recognition of equal rights to the American natives by Vitoria was the pedigree on which Scott built a progressive international law, responsive to the rise of the United States as the leading global power and developments in international organization such as the creation of the League of Nations.

This book describes the Spanish origin project in context, relying on Scott's biography, changes in the self-understanding of the international legal profession, as well as on larger social and political trends in US and global history.

< Keeping in mind Vitoria's persisting role as a key figure in the canon of international legal history, the book sheds light on the contingency of shared assumptions about the discipline and their unspoken implications. The legacy of the international law Scott developed for the American century is still with the profession today, in the shape of the normalization and de-politicization of rights language and of key concepts like equality and rule of law.

Introduction

Prologue: The Education of James Brown Scott, 1866-1896

Part I: The Rise and Fall of James Brown Scott and the Turn to United States history, 1898-1921

1: Explaining Scott's Turn to American History

2: International Law as Faith. The Cuban Intervention and the Narrative of 1898

3: International Law as Science. Scott's Historical Case for Adjudication and the Fight against Collective Security

Part II: Rewriting International Legal History: Vitoria and the New World, 1925-1939

4: The Spanish Origin of International Law

5: The Catholic Conception of International Law

6: Apostles of Equality: James Brown Scott and the Feminist Cause

Concluding Remarks: The Legacy of James Brown Scott and the Responsibilities of International Legal History