Based on an article recently published in the Asian Journal of International Law in 2022 “Looking Forward Through and Beyond the Western Classics of International Law“, this seminar will provide a gateway to Francisco de Vitoria and Hugo Grotius’s significance for international law and its history by providing and commenting critically on a tenfold list of attributes of what makes a classic of international law.  The proposed ten distinguishing features of the “global” classics of international law are that: 1) they have been used as lenses to address a larger historical theme; 2) their prominent position in the intellectual canon and as landmark in the historical periodization of international law; 3) their broad interdisciplinary appeal; 4) the fact that they have become a shortcut for intellectual traditions of thinking about the international; 5) that they have become identified as the first expounders of international legal ideas and doctrines; and also 6) that they have been turned into an intellectual symbol of cultural patriotism over time. Moreover, the distinguishing traits of a classic of international law also include: 7) the multiple interpretations and reinterpretations to which their oeuvre have been subjected; 8) their hegemonically induced universal appeal; 9) the more recent diachronic use to which their works have been put to contextually investigate episodes of the history of international law from the nineteenth century up to the present; and last, but not least, 10) the semi-industrial quantity of academic commentary they have attracted over time.

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