A common law of nations. International legal codification within the first peace congress movement (1843-1851)

This article deals with debates on the codification of international law in the international peace conferences of the mid-nineteenth century. Between 1843 and 1851, the adherents of the peace movement organized a series of five international conferences on the problem of war and peace in Europe and the wider world. Scholars have thus far focussed on either organizational aspects or the predominance of religious or economic argument. Less attention has been devoted to the legal instruments discussed at each event. While arbitration was adopted as the most achievable course of action, a significant minority desired that any recourse to law should be reinforced by a new international code. In their advocacy for a code, peace friends revealed their sympathies to various political ideologies, as well as their prior legal educations. When the peace movement turned to law more explicitly from the 1870s onwards, many fundamental questions about the role of law in the peace question had already been first touched upon decades earlier.