Specialists from every European country analyze peace treaty practice from the late fifteenth century to the 1919 Peace of Versailles in this collection. Emphasizing the doctrinal debate about peace treaties and the influence of older, Roman and medieval, concepts on modern practices, the book recalls the reader to before the epochal Peace Treaties of Westphalia of 1648. Its broader perspective allows for a reassessment of the role of the sovereign state in the modern international legal order.

An analysis of peace treaty practice from the late fifteenth century to the Peace of Versailles of 1919.

The rediscovery of Roman law and the emergence of classical canon law around AD 1100 marked the beginnings of the civil law tradition in Europe. Between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries, a highly sophisticated legal science of a truly European dimension was developed. Since then the different European States have developed their own national legal systems, but with the exception of England and Ireland they are all heirs to this tradition of the ius commune. This historical introduction to the civil law tradition, from its original Roman roots to the present day, considers the political...