On the Use and Abuse of Francisco de Vitoria: James Brown Scott and Carl Schmitt

This article traces the use and abuse of Francisco de Vitoria in the work of James Brown Scott and Carl Schmitt. With reference to his notebook entries from the period, it argues that Schmitt's interpretation of Francisco de Vitoria and the Respublica Christiana in Der Nomos der Erde was a polemical response to the work of James Brown Scott, meant to weaponise the legacy of Vitoria and thereby undercut the basis for liberal internationalist theories of just war and the formal equality of states. In doing so, the present study provides a historicist account of Schmitt's own attempt to construct a history of the law of nations in the aftermath of World War II.