The Saint Petersburg School of International Law

An Encyclopedic Treatise on the St. Petersburg School

 

Based on unprecedented use of archival sources in St. Petersburg and the United States, this encyclopedic treatise is dedicated to the individuals associated with the development of international legal doctrine and state practice for two centuries in the capital of the Russian Empire. Well over four hundred are identified and the contributions of principal figures are summarized or critiqued. St. Petersburg University, which celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2024, is the key institution, but others played a role. The contributions of each are examined.

 

The "St. Petersburg School" is broadly construed to encompass jurists and international legal practitioners whose contact with the capital was brief, but nonetheless documented. The ethnic origins of the St. Petersburg international legal community are impressive in their diversity: Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Georgians, Moldovans, Poles, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Baltic Germans, Jews, and Hungarians, augmented by individuals from Scandinavian and Western European countries. Extensive bibliographical references, as well as photographs of 60 of the lawyers, enrich the existing corpus of contributions by St. Petersburg to international legal doctrine.

 

William E. Butler has written extensively on the history of international law, including as the editor and translator of V. E. Grabar, The History of International Law in Russia 1647-1917 (Oxford, 1990); the two-volume F. F. Martens, Contemporary International Law of Civilized Peoples (Clark, NJ, 2021-2022); and author of Grotius on War and Peace in English Translation (Clark, NJ, 2021). He is the founding editor of Jus Gentium: Journal of International Legal History (2016-). The John Edward Fowler Distinguished Professor of Law, Penn State Dickinson Law, he is also Professor Emeritus of Comparative Law in the University of London (University College London) and Foreign Member, Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine.

 

Vitalii S. Ivanenko has published extensively on the history of international law in Russia with particular reference to St. Petersburg, most especially the monumental Санкт-Петербургская школа международного права [St. Petersburg School of International Law] (2019; 2d ed. 2022; 3d ed. 2024) in two volumes. He held positions as senior lecturer, docent, professor, Head of the Chair of International Law, and Pro-Rector for Scientific Work at universities in Baranul and St. Petersburg before, in 1995, becoming Docent at St. Petersburg State University, serving from 1999 to 2011 as Head of the Chair of International Law there.

 

xxiv, 638 pp., 60 b&w illustrations.

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