As an undergraduate I noticed occasionally that quite often my bibliographies - alphabetically speaking - were particularly stacked around certain letters or in one particular part of the alphabet. It's something that I found in diplomatic compilations in even a more pronounced way: three scholars drawn to international law, compilations of peace treaties and diplomacy with the same surname.
In the first case it's not incredibly surprising as the work of the German jurist and diplomat Georg F. Martens (above), best known as the editor of the Nouvelle recueil des traites, was continued on his death, by his nephew, Karl von Martens. The younger Martens shared his uncle's interests; as well as editing his own treaty series, he also wrote a guide to famous cases of international law in history and the widely-read practical guide for the diplomat Le guide diplomatique, I was lucky enough to pick up for only a few pounds before I left the UK in the 2nd edition of 1832.
The third Martens was a Russian legal scholar who was active around the turn of the twentieth century, Fedor Fedorovich Martens (1845-1909.) He represented Russia at the first Hague Convention of 1899 and drafted the clause that became known as the "Martens Clause", which stated: "Until a more complete code of the laws of war is issued, the High Contracting Parties think it right to declare that in cases not included in the Regulations adopted by them, populations and belligerents remain under the protection and empire of the principles of international law, as they result from the usages established between civilized nations, from the laws of humanity and the requirements of the public conscience." In more plain words, just because certain principles or acts are not prohibited in the stipulations of treaties it does not necessarily follow that those principles or acts are legal. Moreover, it also recognises that international law is not only adjudicated by those that shape it and their appointed arbiters, but that it also should be subject to the public conscience.
He wrote many works on international law, including a series on Russian treaties with other powers that stretched to fifteen volumes and a more general studies of war and peace, and international law, Traité de droit international. See also the biography of him by V.V. Poustogarov Our Martens: F.F. Martens, International Lawyer and Architect of Peace (Kluwer Law International, 2000)
The title is an excuse to deviate from the subject slightly. A richness is the collective noun referring to the furry kind of marten related to minks and weasels (rather than those related to international jurists, I couldn't find a collective term for them. Perhaps a martens?) While we're off the subject, in looking about to find this piece of information I also found out another piece of useless information which I quite liked: the mobile phone company Nokia is named after a stream near where the company started in Finland, the Nokianvirter or stream of the nokia marten, which lived there in great numbers.
No comments:
Post a Comment