Samuel Rachel

Samuel Rachel, born 6 April 1628 in Lunden and who died 13 December 1691 in Friedrichstadt, was a German legal scholar, librarian and diplomat who studied at the University of Rostock, the University of Leipzig and the University of Jena before becoming professor of ethics at Helmstedt in 1658 and, from 1666, professor of natural and international law at Kiel University, where he also served as university librarian. In his 1676 work De Jure Naturae et Gentium he followed Hugo Grotius's approach rather than that of his contemporary Samuel von Pufendorf, developing a voluntarist strand of natural law and international law doctrine that treated the law of nations as founded on the consent of states rather than purely on rational deduction, work for which he is regarded as one of the first systematic shapers of international law doctrine. He also served as staller, a local administrative official, of Eiderstedt in 1680 and again from 1689 to 1691.