LCIL Friday Lecture: 'Law, politics and moral reasoning in Hugo Grotius's The law of war and peace (1625)' by Dr Annabel Brett

Lecture summary: At various points throughout this work, Grotius makes reference to a category that he variously calls 'morals' (moralia), 'moral things' (res morales) or 'the matter of morals' (materia moralis). This field of entities is always invoked in conjunction with certain principles of reasoning that shape the scope and application of more strictly legal principles and reasoning. This lecture looks at how 'moral' reasoning intersects with legal reasoning to produce Grotius's distinctive view of the international order. I argue that it is the appeal to 'morals' that allows him to craft a jurisprudence that accommodates the concrete realities of power within and between states while still differentiating itself from politics and reason of state. Dr Annabel Brett is a Reader in the History of Political Thought, University of Cambridge and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.