Emmerich de Vattel (25 April 1714 to 28 December 1767) was a philosopher, diplomat and jurist from the Principality of Neuchatel whose work profoundly influenced the development of international law. He is most famous for his 1758 book The Law of Nations, which combined naturalist and positivist legal reasoning and synthesized Christian Wolff framework with ideas drawn from Leibniz and Hugo Grotius to establish principles governing the conduct of states and diplomatic relations. The work proved highly influential among the American founders; Benjamin Franklin noted that it had been continually in the hands of members of the Continental Congress, and the United States Department of Defense 2015 Law of War Manual cites Vattel as an authoritative secondary source on the law of war.
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