De Jure Praedae

Hugo Grotius (1583 –1645, in Dutch Hugo de Groot) was a Dutch humanist, diplomat, lawyer, theologian, jurist, poet, and playwright.

A teenage intellectual prodigy, he started studying law at Leiden University at the age of 11. Grotius is considered by many as the ‘father of international law’. Hugo Grotius was one of the first to define expressly the idea of one society of states, governed not by force or warfare but by actual laws and mutual agreement to enforce those laws.

Two of his books have had a lasting impact in the field of international law: De Jure Belli Ac Pacis (On the Law of War and Peace) and the Mare Liberum (The Freedom of the Seas).

During a period of truce between Spain and the Netherlands, Grotius was arrested and imprisoned in the castle of Loevestein because he called for a stable peace with Spain (which was against the wishes of governor Maurits of the Netherlands). While imprisoned, he was allowed to study and permitted to write books. To facilitate that, Grotius was regularly sent a coffin-sized bookcase filled with books. This bookcase was brought back and forth by the soldiers who were guarding him. Initially, the bookcase was strictly controlled, but later, the regime relaxed and Grotius was able to escape by hiding in it. He then fled to France. His request to the States of Holland for his wife and children to join him in France was granted on the condition that Grotius would never return to the Netherlands.

Mare Liberum (or The Freedom of the Seas) is a book in Latin on international law written by the Dutch jurist and philosopher Hugo Grotius. In Mare Liberum, first published in 1609, Grotius formulated the new principle that the sea was international territory and all nations were free to use it for seafaring trade. The disputation was directed towards the Portuguese Mare Clausum policy and their claim of monopoly on the East Indian Trade. England, competing fiercely with the Dutch for domination of world trade, opposed this idea and, in response, issued a Mare Clausum document (The Closed Sea).

Grotius argued that the sea was free to all and that nobody had the right to deny others access to it. He based his argument on what he called the “most specific and unimpeachable axiom of the Law of Nations, called a primary rule or first principle, the spirit of which is self-evident and immutable”, namely that: “Every nation is free to travel to every other nation, and to trade with it.” From this premise, Grotius argued that this self-evident and immutable right required

(1) a right of innocent passage over land, and

(2) a similar right of innocent passage at sea.

Mare Liberum is a part of his legal thesis issued under the name De Jure Praedae, On the Law of Prize and Booty.

In 1604, after a Dutch admiral seized the Portuguese vessel Santa Catarina off present-day Singapore, the Dutch East India Company asked Grotius to produce a work, legally defending that action. The groundwork for that defense was that, by claiming a monopoly on the right of trade, Portugal (and Spain) had deprived the Dutch of their natural trading rights. Grotius’s resulting work, De Jure Praedae (“On the Law of Prize and Booty”) is a comprehensive 17th-century work that examines the historical, political, and legal aspects of war and is widely credited as a major foundation of international law because of its argument against the territorial sovereignty of the world’s coastal waters.

De Jure Praedae remained unpublished during his lifetime, except for one chapter—in which Grotius defends free access to the ocean for all nations—which in 1609 appeared under the famous title Mare Liberum (“The Freedom of the Seas”).

In De Jure Praedae, Grotius discusses that the capture of property from an opposing nation is not restricted to issues of legality; he seeks to determine also whether it is honorable or expedient. Grotius sought to ground his defense of the seizure in terms of the natural principles of justice.

Grotius’ natural principles of justice have been our firm’s precept. The seizure of part of your income items by governments through taxation, and our endeavor in retaining or reclaiming your income items against such seizure when it results in over-taxation follow the natural principles of justice. The legal name of our company is ‘De Jure Praedae’, also operating under the name Cross Border Tax Law, defends and secures your right to your ‘Prize and Booty’ and liberates you from international double taxation.