Roman Law Group: The hidden lever. Roman Law in Hersch Lauterpacht's doctrine of international law

Hersch Lauterpacht is currently regarded as one of the most important British 20th-century theorists of international law. The knighthood he received in 1956 helped cement his reputation as a champion of "Victorian" legal values. His thinking about law was shaped by his studies in Lviv and Vienna during the first half of the 20th century, though this is rarely remembered. When Lauterpacht arrived in the British Isles in 1923, he was intellectually fully formed. His first English study, “Private Law Sources and Analogies of International Law,” is, at its core, deeply positivist. He showed how many institutions devised by the Romans for individuals were later expanded and applied to relations between states. In later works, he also used Roman law as a point of reference in “organising” and giving international law a coherent structure. 

Speaker biography

Professor Maciej Jońca – lawyer and art historian. Enthusiast and populariser of ancient culture. Lecturer in the history of law and political-legal doctrines at the Kazimierz Pułaski University in Radom. In the 2024–2025 semester, he was a visiting fellow at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law in Cambridge. His research examines how Roman law has been incorporated into contemporary legal cultures. He has published short studies highlighting the contributions of Polish lawyers of Jewish descent to the development of the legal doctrine of international law.