Alfred Verdross

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Alfred Verdross (sometimes Alfred Verdroß-Droßberg; 22 February 1890 – 27 April 1980), was an Austrian diplomat and university professor at the University of Vienna. He is considered the most important Austrian international jurist of the 20th century.

Biography

Alfred Verdross was the son of Ignaz Verdroß von Droßberg, an general of the Austro-Hungarian army who was ennobled in 1911. He was a teacher of international law, a writer and a legal philosopher. Initially a diplomat, Verdross was professor at the Diplomatic Academy from 1922, from 1924 to 1960 university professor at the University of Vienna and from 1958 to 1977 judge at the European Court of Human Rights. He was also a member of the International Law Commission and the Institut de Droit International.

Together with Adolf Julius Merkl, Verdross was a student of Hans Kelsen. Characterized by the unity of pure legal doctrine, he made the same for the relationship between international law and state law as well as the understanding of the international community.

However, Verdross turned away from Kelsen's right-wing positivism at an early stage and renewed the classic Christian-Catholic doctrine of international law on the basis of the approaches of the School of Salamanca (Francisco de Vitoria, Francisco Suárez), which was also based on Hugo Grotius and the entire Protestant doctrine of natural law of the 17th and 18th centuries Century (Johannes Althusius, Samuel Pufendorf, Christian Wolff) was of great influence. In his legal philosophy, he tied in with the common good of the state in Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas.

Verdross, who founded the Viennese school of international law and legal philosophy, which was shaped by natural law, was able, through his stupendous knowledge of positive law, to shape it into a closed system on the basis of his legal-philosophical approaches, which found its support in state practice. The development of the international community after the Second World War shows natural law values ​​in many aspects, especially in the idea of ​​the fair distribution of the goods of this world (see the “New International Economic Order” proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1974) also found its unspoken expression in the development of the doctrine of the basic rights and basic duties of states and in many other things. This confirms the idea formulated by Verdross of expanding the classic concept of the bonum commune, i.e. the concept of the common good developed in connection with the state, to the bonum commune humanitatis, the world common good.

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