Lassa Oppenheim

Lassa Francis Lawrence Oppenheim (March 30, 1858 – October 7, 1919) was a renowned German jurist. He is regarded by many as the father of the modern discipline of international law, especially the hard legal positivist school of thought. He inspired Joseph Raz and Prosper Weil.

Birth, life, and career in Germany

Oppenheim was born in Windecken near the Free City of Frankfurt, German Confederation, son of a Jewish horse trader,^[1] and educated at the Universities of Berlin, Göttingen and Heidelberg. In 1881 he obtained his PhD of Law at the University of Göttingen. In 1883 he went to the University of Leipzig, where he became a disciple of the renowned Professor of Criminal Law Karl Binding.In 1885 he completed his Habilitation at the University of Freiburg and taught criminal law there until he moved to the University of Basel in 1892. In Basel Oppenheim still worked on criminal law. It was not until he moved to the United Kingdom that he turned from criminal law to international law.

Life and career in the United Kingdom

Oppenheim moved to the United Kingdom in 1895, acquired citizenship in 1900 and lived there until his death.

He first lectured at the London School of Economics and in 1908 became the Whewell Professor of International Law in the University of Cambridge. He is the author of the internationally renowned International Law: A Treatise, the first edition of which was published in 1905-1906. The eighth edition of the part on peace was edited by Sir Hersch Lauterpacht; the ninth and most recent edition of the same part was co-edited by Sir Robert Jennings and Sir Arthur Watts. The work is still considered a standard text of International Law.

Works

Books and Monograms

• Die Rechtsbeugungsverbrechen des Deutschen Reichsstrafgesetzbuches (1886)
• Die Nebenklage im deutschen Strafprozess (1889)
• Zur Lehre von der Untersuchungshaft (1889)
• Die Objekte des Verbrechens (1894)
• Das Gewissen (1898)
• International Law: volume i, Peace (1905; second edition, 1911), volume ii, War, (1906; second edition, 1912)
• (Cambridge University Press 1909); second edition, 1911)
• The Future of International Law (in German, 1912; English, by Bate, 1914)
• (Cambridge University Press 1913)
• Collection of three lectures (Longmans, Green and Co. 1919)

Other works

• The Science of International Law: Its Task and Method, American Journal of International Law, vol. ii, pp.313-56 (1908)

Edited by Oppenheim

• The Collected Papers of John Westlake on Public International Law (Cambridge University Press 1914)
• Co-editor, Zeitschrift für Völkerrecht, Vols. i-viii (1906-14)
• Contributions to International Law and Diplomacy (Longmans, Green and Co.)

References

External links

• Gallica
• Gallica
• [1]. The Internationalist as a Scientist and Herald: Lassa Oppenheim
• [2]. Legal Positivism as Normative Politics: International Society, Balance of Power and Lassa Oppenheim's Positive International Law