Kochi, Tarik (2017) Conflicting lineages of international law: Cicero, Hugo Grotius and Adam Smith on global property relations. Jurisprudence, 8 (2). pp. 257-286. ISSN 2040-3313

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Abstract

This essay presents an interpretation of the juridical thought of Cicero, Hugo Grotius and Adam Smith. Focussing upon questions of property, capital accumulation and violence, the essay traces a tension within their writings between a social ethic of human fellowship and compassion, and, a theory of the utility of ‘unsocial’ commercial self-interest. This tension forms a key problem for the tradition of liberal international law. For Grotius and Smith one response to this tension is to attempt to reign in capitalist markets by asserting a range of moral duties to individuals and to the nation-state. The importance of stressing such an interpretation is to reject the flattening-out of the liberal political and juridical tradition by contemporary neoliberal thought, and to reclaim a number of ways of thinking about the global economy and international law in which moral action and political intervention are understood as playing a necessary and essential role.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	School of Law, Politics and Sociology > Law
Subjects:	J Political Science > JC Political theory. The state. Theories of the state J Political Science > JZ International relations K Law > K Law in General. Comparative and uniform Law. Jurisprudence > K0140 History of Law K Law > K Law in General. Comparative and uniform Law. Jurisprudence > K0201 Jurisprudence. Philosophy and theory of law
Depositing User:	Tarik Kochi
Date Deposited:	16 Aug 2016 06:02
Last Modified:	13 Feb 2018 02:00
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/62401

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