Natural Law and International Law Founders

The founders of law as a system binding states and peoples beyond any one sovereign, working from natural-law premises before international law was a recognized field. Belongs here: Francisco de Vitoria, whose lectures on the Spanish conquest are read as an origin point of international law, Hugo Grotius, generally credited as the father of international law, and Emer de Vattel, whose Law of Nations shaped eighteenth century diplomatic and legal practice. Does not belong here: a later positivist theorist of law in general rather than of relations between states, grouped under legal philosophy and jurisprudence instead.