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7 Tel Aviv U. Stud. L. 9 (1985-1986)
The Grotian Concept of Good Faith

handle is hein.journals/telavusl7 and id is 9 raw text is: THE GROTIAN CONCEPT OF GOOD FAITH By Haim H. Cohn** Last year the legal world celebrated the 400th anniversary of the birth of Huigh de Groot, better known as Hnown as Hugo Grotius (10 April 1583). It might not be accurate to extol this great Dutch jurist as the founder of modern international law. His famous opus magnum, De iure belli acpacis, first appeared in 1625: it had been preceded by treatises on international law by Vitoria,' Ayala,2 Gentilis,3 and Suarez4 - to name only the most frequently quoted by Grotius. Nor would it be correct to say that Grotius' work contains a valid statement of positive interna- tional law even of his time: in fact, it is a curious mixture of moral theology and legal history, partly an anthological compilation, partly an inductive juridical composition - and the many contradictory dicta as to the respective priorities of divine or natural law, or as to what would be permissible and what would be prohibited in the course of warfare, render its usefulness as a legal textbook questionable.5 The greater may the significance be that must attach to some of the principles and postu- lates which underlie the Grotian edifice: they have not in the course of the centuries lost anything of their validity and actuality. First and foremost among them ranks the principle of fides, that is, good faith. * This article is based on a Paper delivered at the Sixth International Congress of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, Good Faith in International and Inter-personal Relations, held at Jerusalem, August 1984. ** President, International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists; Deputy Presi- dent Emeritus, Supreme Court of Israel. 1. Francisco de Vitoria (born 1480, Spain): De Indis Recenter Inventis et de Jure Belli (published posthumously, 1546). 2. Baltasar Ayala (born 1548, Spain): De Jure et Officiis Bellicis et Disciplina Militari (1582). 3. Alberico Gentili (born 1552, Italy, settled in England 1580): De Jure Belli, Libri Tres (1598). 4. Francisco Suarez (born 1545, Spain): De Legibus ac Deo Legislatorex (1612). 5. See Lauterpacht, The Grotian Tradition in International Law, in British Year- book of International Law, vol.23 (1946), translated into Hebrew in Feinberg (ed.), Studies in Public International Law in Memory of Sir Hersh Lauterpacht (Jerusa- lem 1961) 9 et seq.

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