Richard Zouche

Richard Zouche (born 1590, Ansty, Wiltshire, Eng.—died March 1, 1661, Oxford) was an English jurist, one of the founders of international law, who became regius professor of civil law at Oxford and later practiced successfully in London.

Zouche was appointed a judge of the Court of Admiralty in 1641 and was twice returned to Parliament as a representative for Hythe, Kent. Zouche was a Royalist, and during the English Civil Wars, in 1646, he was one of those who negotiated the surrender of Oxford to the Commonwealth forces. He lost his seat on the bench in 1649 but retained his professorship and was reappointed to the Court of Admiralty after the Restoration (1660).

Zouche is remembered for his treatise on international law, Juris et Judicii Fecialis (1650), the first scientific manual covering the entire field. As custom and contemporary precedents loomed larger in his work than in the work of earlier writers, Zouche is thought by some scholars to have been the first positivist. Though he did not coin the phrase jus inter gentes (“law among nations”) for international law, he first adopted it as a title more apt for the subject than jus gentium (“law of nations”).