"Father of international law," author of On the Law of War and Peace
A Dutch jurist and thinker, revered as the "father of international law." In an age when Europe was torn by the brutal Thirty Years’ War, he wrote On the Law of War and Peace, arguing that even between nations, even in war, there exists a legal constraint grounded in human reason and transcending any sovereign — when it is just to go to war, and what acts are forbidden in war, should have rules. He extended Cicero’s "natural law" from the individual to relations between states, laying the first framework for modern international relations, the law of war, and humanitarian law.
Grotius, caught up in a political struggle, was sentenced to life imprisonment. His wife devised a scheme: to hide him inside the large chest used to carry books to and from the castle, fooling the guards and carrying him out with the "books." The man who would one day give the whole world a body of law first saved his own life with a book chest — and in exile went on to write the founding work of international law.
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