Professor Martti Koskenniemi
Professor of International Law and
Director, Erik Castren Institute of International Law and Human Rights,
University of Helsinki
"Empire and International Law: The Spanish Contribution"
4:30-6:30 pm
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Flavelle House Classroom "C"
78 Queen's Park Cres.
Faculty of Law,
University of Toronto
The 2009-2010 Wright Lecture was published in issue 61:1 of the University of Toronto Law Journal
The Spanish Scholastics of the sixteenth century are generally known as the precursors of Hugo Grotius in the application of natural law and the law of nations (ius gentium) to the political relations of early modern states. Their writings on the American Indians have been read as especially significant for the formation of the humanist–colonialist legacy of (European) international law. I have no quarrel with these views. This essay will, however, claim that the principal legacy of the Salamanca scholars lay in their development of a vocabulary of private rights (of dominium) that enabled the universal ordering of international relations by recourse to private property, contract, and exchange. This vocabulary provided an efficient articulation for Europe's ‘informal empire’ over the rest of the world and is still operative as the legal foundation of global relations of power.
Martti Koskenniemi is an international lawyer and a professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights. In 2008 - 2009 he held the seat of distinguished visiting Goodhart Professor at the Faculty of Law, Cambridge University. He has been Global Professor of Law in the New York University, and a member of the International Law Commission (2002-2006). He served in the Finnish Diplomatic Service in the years 1978-1996, lastly as director of the Division of International Law.
