Louis Renault (jurist)

Louis Renault was a French jurist and legal educator who lived from 21 May 1843 to 8 February 1918 and shared the 1907 Nobel Peace Prize with Ernesto Teodoro Moneta for his decisive influence on the conduct and outcome of the Hague and Geneva conferences. He taught Roman and commercial law at the University of Dijon from 1868 to 1873, then joined the law faculty of the University of Paris and the Paris Institute of Political Studies, becoming professor of international law there in 1881. In 1890 the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs created for him the post of jurisconsult, in which he reviewed French foreign policy against the requirements of international law, and in that capacity he represented France at the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 and the London Naval Conference of 1908 to 1909. He served as an arbitrator or counsel in a number of major international disputes, including the Japanese House Tax case of 1905, the Casablanca case of 1909, the Savarkar case of 1911, and the Carthage and Manouba cases of 1913, and he published works including an 1879 introduction to the study of international law and a wartime study of Germany's early violations of international law.