The Invention of Custom

Natural Law and the Law of Nations, Ca. 1550-1750
Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-0-19-289795-4
Verlag: Sydney University Press

Buch, Englisch, 304 Seiten, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 237 mm, Gewicht: 640 g

Reihe: The History and Theory of International Law

The concept of customary international law, although differently formulated, is already present in early modern European debates on natural law and the law of nations. However, no scholarly monograph has, until now, addressed the relationship between custom and the European natural law and ius gentium tradition. This book tells that neglected story, and offers a solid conceptual framework to contextualize and understand the 'problematic of custom', namely
how to identify its normative content. Natural law doctrines, and the different ways in which they help construct human reason, provided custom with such normative content. This normative content consists of a set of fundamental moral values that help identify the status of custom as either a fundamental
feature or an original source of ius gentium. This book explores what cultural values and practices facilitated the emergence of custom and rendered it into as a source of the law of nations, and how they did so. Two crucial issues form the core of the book's analysis. Firstly, it qualifies the nature of the interrelation between natural law and ius gentium, explaining why it matters in relation to our understanding of the idea of custom. Second, the book claims that the process of
custom formation as a source of law calls into question the role of the authority of history. The interpretation of the past through this approach can thus be described as one of 'invention'.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Iurlaro, Francesca

Fachgebiete

• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtsgeschichte, Recht der Antike
• Rechtswissenschaften Internationales Recht und Europarecht Internationales Recht Internationales Öffentliches Recht, Völkerrecht, Internationale Organisationen

Über Autor(innen)

Francesca Iurlaro is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. She holds a PhD in Law from the European University Institute in Florence (2018). She graduated in the history of philosphy (University of Macerata, 2014) and has an LLM in Comparative, European and International Laws (European University Institute, 2015). She was a Global Postdoctoral Fellow at NYU School of Law (2019-2020).

Her research interests include international legal thought, history of political thought, history and reception of natural law theories, law and literature, food ethics, and animal rights. In 2012 she was awarded the Alberico Gentili Prize for her Italian translation of and introduction to Alberico Gentili's Lectionis Virgilianae Variae Liber ad Robertum filium, a less-known commentary of Virgil's Eclogues published by the famous Italian jurist in 1603.