摘要：The scenes from Baghdad during April of this year (2003) lead
to the reflection whether looting may not stake a claim to being the
oldest profession. Another hotly debated aspect of the war on Iraq
was the question whether this was a just war. Of particular interest
for legal historians is that both topics lead us to the renaissance
man of Dutch legal history, Hugo de Groot, who is regarded to be
one of the founding fathers of international law. Less well known
is, however, the preliminary work leading to his De Iure Belli ac
Pacis and it is this work, the De Jure Praedae Commentarius and
the insights it provides into the Dutch ‘state’ and society, which will
be the topic of this paper.
