‘Victorian’ Traditions: British International Law Scholarship, 1830–1914

What are the philosophical and normative orientations of British international law scholarship during the Victorian era? This article explores and answers this question in three complementary steps. It begins with an analysis of the ‘public’ international law textbooks after 1830 to show that, instead of a single legal tradition, there coexisted three competing traditions during this period: a ‘naturalist’, an ‘historicist’ and a ‘voluntarist’ tradition. These three Victorian traditions will, in a second step, be studied in the context of ‘private’ international law—a discipline that developed and received its name during this period. A third section finally offers a detailed examination of the transformative work of Lassa Oppenheim, which straddled the Victorian nineteenth century and the ‘modern’ twentieth century. In revisiting the normative project(s) of Victorian international law, the article hopes to critique three prominent views in the contemporary academic literature. The first view holds that voluntarist State positivism exercised a dominant influence on British international law scholarship after 1830; a second view has claimed, relatedly, that during this period an idiosyncratic ‘English’ approach to international law emerged; and a third view has famously suggested that there was a ‘radical’ break in the discipline of international law around 1870.