Historical Law-Tracts

Historical Law-Tracts is one of the earliest contributions to the Scottish Enlightenment project of a historical science of society. Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782), was an influential Scottish judge, a prolific man of letters, and one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment in Scotland ...

The Law of Nations Treated according to the scientific method

Christian Wolff's natural law theory was founded on his rationalist philosophy and metaphysics, which were strongly influenced by the philosophy of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Like Leibniz, Wolff was convinced that justice and morality were based on universally valid principles of reason and that these ...

Principles of Equity

Henry Home, Lord Kames, was the complete 'Enlightenment man', concerned with the full spectrum of human knowledge and its social use. However, as a lawyer and, after 1752, as a judge on the Court of Session in Edinburgh, he made many of his most distinctive ...

An introduction to the history of the principal kingdoms and states of Europe

Samuel Pufendorf was a pivotal figure in the early German Enlightenment and, along with Grotius, the great renewer of natural law theory. His version of voluntarist natural law theory had a major influence both on the European continent and in the English speaking world, particularly ...

On temporal and spiritual authority

on laymen or secular people, on the temporal power of the Pope, against William Bairclay, on the primary duty of the Supreme Pontiff

Robert Bellarmine was one of the most original and influential political theorists of his time. He participated in several of the political debates that agitated early modern Europe, such as the controversy over the Oath of Allegiance in England. Bellarmine presents one of the clearest ...

Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence

with selections from Foundations of the Law of Nature and Nations

Christian Thomasius' natural jurisprudence is essential to understanding the origins of the Enlightenment in Germany, where his importance was comparable to that of John Locke's in England. First published in 1688, Thomasius' "Institutionum Jurisprudentiae Divinae" ("Institutes of Divine Jurisprudence") attempted to draw a clear ...

Two books of the elements of universal jurispredence

Edited and with an introduction by Thomas Behme; General editor Knud Haakonssen. "Two Books of the Elements of Universal Jurisprudence" was Pufendorf's first work, published in 1660. Its appearance effectively inaugurated the modern natural-law movement in the German-speaking world. The work also established Pufendorf ...

Commentary on the Law of prize and booty

The history of "Commentary on the Law of Prize and Booty" is complex. When Grotius's personal papers were auctioned in The Hague in 1864, Dutch scholars discovered that his famous "Mare Liberum" was just one chapter in a manuscript of 163 folios, written in ...

The divine Feudal Law

or, covenants with mankind, represented

Of the nature and qualification of religion in reference to civil society