Jean Bodin

This volume translates four chapters of Bodin's Six livres de la république, a vast synthesis of comparative public law and politics.

In the course of a lifetime, Jean Bodin aimed at nothing less than to encompass all the disciplines of his age in a huge encyclopedia of knowledge. In many areas, his ideas have been not only original but seminal. He made major contributions to historiography, philosophy of history, economics, political science, comparative public law and policy, religion and national philosophy. This volume brings together a selection of major articles in English, representing almost all of his intellectual interests. It is an essential collection for libraries and scholars in both humanities and social sciences.

In this intellectual biography, Howell A. Lloyd presents the first rounded treatment of influential sixteenth-century French thinker, Jean Bodin, examining his life and times, his writings (major and minor), and his ideas in their contemporary context, as well as in that of broader intellectual traditions

Sovereignty is the vital organizing principle of modern international law. This book examines the origins of that principle in the legal and political thought of its most influential theorist, Jean Bodin (1529/30-1596). As the author argues in this study, Bodin's most lasting theoretical contribution was his thesis that sovereignty must be conceptualized as an indivisible bundle of legal rights constitutive of statehood. While these uniform 'rights of sovereignty' licensed all states to exercise numerous exclusive powers, including the absolute power to 'absolve' and release its citizens from legal duties, they were ultimately derived from, and therefore limited by, the law of nations. The book explores Bodin's creative synthesis of classical sources in philosophy, history, and the medieval legal science of Roman and canon law in crafting the rules governing state-centric politics. The Right of Sovereignty is the first book in English on Bodin's legal and political theory to be published in nearly a half-century and surveys themes overlooked in modern Bodin scholarship: empire, war, conquest, slavery, citizenship, commerce, territory, refugees, and treaty obligations. It will interest specialists in political theory and the history of modern political thought, as well as legal history, the philosophy of law, and international law.