Abstract

In light of recent reevaluations of the work of Hugo Grotius, this essay analyzes the respective roles of Francisco de Vitoria and Grotius in the construction of the “Grotian tradition” of international law and human rights. In contrast to conventional accounts which understand the two within a progression, this essay argues that Vitoria and Grotius can alternatively be understood as representing two distinct strains of international law and ethics, forms of which persist to this day. The first is that strain which privileges local governance based on the natural law and which insists that international law must have a moral or equitable valence (represented today by liberal internationalism). The second, competing strain which, with its focus on “neutral” rules of commerce and international order, presumes that it need not have such a valence (essentially, neoliberalism). In the process, this essay examines the role of the natural law in Vitoria’s thought, which for him was most often a reason against interference or intervention, not for. The essay also highlights the role of the Eighty Years’ War between the Dutch United Provinces and Spain in the development of Grotius’s understanding of sovereignty, in contrast to the Thirty Years’ War which is given more prominence in conventional accounts.