The Internationalist as a Scientist and Herald: Lassa Oppenheim

Mathias Schmoeckel

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Abstract

Lassa Oppenheim's treatise has been called `probably the most influential English textbook of international law'. Its comprehensiveness invited several great internationalists to re-edit the book. But the original intentions of the book, as well as Oppenheim's biography, have not yet been closely investigated. The German-born Oppenheim, professor of criminal law at the University of Basel, focused on international law only after his move to London in 1895. Though naturalized in 1900, his views on law remained influenced by the German methodological discussion of that period, generally labelled as `positivism'. Looking at this discussion more closely, different approaches to `positivism' can be identified. There is Oppenheim's originality as well in so far as he also drew on contemporary psychological theories of law. Thanks to his clear and consistent ideas on method, Oppenheim could reduce the existing doctrinal theories to a seemingly homogeneous body of law. Oppenheim was convinced that such a description would stimulate the spread of the knowledge of international law and thus further international understanding. The modernity of Oppenheim's book is due both to his psychological and his systematic approach. While Oppenheim wrote at the end of the classical period of international law his textbook has become, in its turn, a classic like the work of Grotius.

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