The Law of Nations
The Law of Nations: Or, Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns is a legal treatise on international law by Emerich de Vattel, published in 1758.
Influence
Centuries after his death it was found that United States President George Washington had a number of overdue library books at the time of his death. One of them was The Law of Nations.Swiss editor Charles W.F. Dumas sent Benjamin Franklin three copies of the book in 1775. Franklin received them May 18, June 30, and July 8 by two couriers: Alexandre Pochard and a man named Vaillant. Franklin kept one copy for himself, depositing the second in "our own public library here" and sending the third to the "College of Massachusetts Bay". In December 1775, Franklin thanked Dumas:
Franklin also said that this book by Vattel, "has been continually in the hands of the members of our Congress now sitting".
It provides at least a partial legal basis for modern conscription in the United States. In the Selective Draft Law Cases, upholding the Selective Service Act of 1917, the court stated:
In the United States, Vattel was one of the treatise writers that influenced James Madison's concept of the freedom of the seas in defense of the principle "free ships make free goods". In the longest work Madison ever wrote, he relied heavily upon Vattel to support his argument that the Rule of 1756 had no legal basis.
According to James Madison, Vattel was "justly charged with failing too much in the merit of a careful discrimination; and sometimes with delivering maxims, which he either could not reconcile, or does not take pains to explain." Regarding the chapter on neutrality, Madison says Vattel could have been "more exact in his definitions and more lucid in the order of his ideas".
Former Virginia Governor Patrick Henry is said to have read Vattel to prepare his arguments in the 1791 British Debts Case.
Neutrality
The practice of mercantilist economies granting their own ships legal privileges when trading with their colonies, and sometimes restricting trade entirely, created a whole host of issues in the 18th century. Neutral trade or neutral rights became a matter of controversy in the Seven Years' War in which neutral rights were supported by the Kingdom of France and opposed by the Kingdom of Great Britain. Vattel formulated a differing approach to the Rule of 1756 that had emerged from the prize courts in Britain.With the Rule of 1756 the British had sought to prevent trade by neutral vessels between colonies and mother countries. Practically speaking, this would have stopped American vessels from trading between and the Caribbean and France. Vattel neither fully embraced the British approach distinguishing trade with the enemy and trade for the enemy, nor did he fully subscribe to French the "free ships, free goods" principle. Rather, in the Law of Nations Vattel proposed only some limited restrictions on trade, requiring that states trade with both belligerents to keep their neutral status, but rejected any obligation for neutral states to cease trade. Additionally, neutral nations were encouraged to accept that certain types of goods might be justifiably seized by belligerents, and these seizures should not be construed as acts of war.