From: American Political Science Review | Date: September 1, 1994| Author: Onuf, Nicholas | COPYRIGHT 1994 American Political Science Association. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Once the honorific "father of international law," Hugo Grotius remains a figure of considerable interest--not only to legal scholars but to students of international relations and the history of political thought. Grotius published the first edition of his great treatise, De jure belli ac pacis libri tres (hereafter JBP) in 1625, during the last and greatest of Europe's religious wars. His aim was to identify all legal rules (laws are rules of moral action imposing obligation) that m...