Emmerich de vattel biography definition

PRELIMINARIES Idea and general Principles of the Law of Nations.

Nations being composed of men naturally free and independent, and who, before the establishment of civil societies, lived together in the state of nature,—nations or sovereign states are to be considered as so many free persons living together in the state of nature.

It is a settled point with writers on the natural law, that all men inherit from nature a perfect liberty and independence, of which they cannot be deprived without their own consent.

In a state, the individual citizens do not enjoy them fully and absolutely, because they have made a partial surrender of them to the sovereign.

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But the body of the nation, the state, remains absolutely free and independent with respect to all other men, all other nations, as long as it has not voluntarily submitted to them.

§5. To what laws nations are subject.

As men are subject to the laws of nature,—and as their union in c