Law

Hugo Grotius, Natural Law, and Human Freedom

ABSTRACT

This conference was based on the reading and discussion of the two most famous works by Hugo Grotius: Mare Liberum (1609) and De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625). The focus was on the place of natural law in these two works, considering its sources, its content, its relationship to liberty, and its role today.

READING LIST

From Liberty Fund

The Free Sea

by By Hugo Grotius
Translated by Richard Hakluyt
Edited and with an Introduction by David Armitage

Liberty Fund’s edition of The Free Sea is the only translation of Grotius’s masterpiece undertaken in his own lifetime, left in manuscript by the English historian, Richard Hakluyt (1552–1616). It also contains William Welwod’s critique of Grotius (reprinted for the first time since the seventeenth century) and Grotius’s reply to…

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Additional Readings

Grotius, Hugo. The Rights of War and Peace, Book I. Edited by Richard Tuck. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 2005.

Grotius, Hugo. The Rights of War and Peace, Book II. Edited by Richard Tuck. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 2005.

Selden, John. Mare Clausum; Of the Dominion, Or, Ownership of the Sea. Translated by Marchamont Nedham. Clark: The Lawbook Exchange, LTD., 2004.