Visiting Fellows
History and Theory of International Law Researchers
Benjamin Straumann
Alberico Gentili Fellow , Global Research Fellow (Switzerland)
Benjamin Straumann completed his doctoral dissertation (insigni cum laude) on the classical foundations of Hugo Grotius' natural and international law in 2005 at the University of Zurich after studies in Zurich and Rome. He is currently a Samuel I. Golieb Fellow in legal history. Previously Benjamin has worked for the Swiss Mission to the United Nations and was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. His research interests include ancient political and legal thought, the history of natural and international law, natural rights and social contract theories as well as the early modern reception of Roman law and ancient political thought.
Representative Publications:
• “Is Modern Liberty Ancient? Roman Remedies and Natural Rights in Hugo Grotius’ Early Works on Natural Law,” Law and History Review (forthcoming).
• “The Peace of Westphalia as a Secular Constitution,”Constellations15, no. 2 (June 2008, forthcoming).
• Review of Susan MacCormack, On the Wings of Time. Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007),International Journal of the Classical Tradition 15, no. 1 (2008, forthcoming).
• “Rome. I. History and Interpretation. D. Discussing Rome in Culture and Scholarship, 2.-5. E. The Idea of Rome; Rome as Argument, 1.-2., 4.-5.,” in: Brill's New Pauly. Encyclopaedia of the Ancient World, ed. by Manfred Landfester, in association with Hubert Cancik and Helmuth Schneider, Classical Tradition, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, forthcoming. [English translation of my 2002 article in Der Neue Pauly.]
• Hugo Grotius und die Antike. Römisches Recht und römische Ethik im frühneuzeitlichen Naturrecht. Studien zur Geschichte des Völkerrechts 14, ed. A. Bogdandy, M. Stolleis. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2007.
• “Ius erat in armis: The Roman and Spanish Empires and Their Discontents,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 13, 4 (2007), pp. 597-607. [ReviewEssay on Lupher, David. Romans in a New World: Classical Models in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 2003.]
• “‘Ancient Caesarian Lawyers’ in a State of Nature: Roman Tradition and Natural Rights in Hugo Grotius’ De iure praedae,” Political Theory 34, no. 3 (2006), pp. 328-350.
• “The Right to Punish as a Just Cause of War in Hugo Grotius’ Natural Law,” Studies in the History of Ethics 2 (February 2006), pp. 1-20. http://www.historyofethics.org/022006/022006Straumann.html
• “Appetitus societatis and oikeiosis: Hugo Grotius’ Ciceronian Argument for Natural Law and Just War,” Grotiana New Series 24/25 (2003/2004), pp. 41-66.
Past Visiting Fellows and Doctoral Researchers in the Program
