City Readers Digital Historic Collections at the New York Society Library

Emer (Emmerich) de Vattel (25 April 1714 – 28 December 1767) was an international lawyer. He was born in Couvet in Neuchâtel (now Switzerland) in 1714 and died in 1767 of edema. He was largely influenced by Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius. He is most famous for his 1758 work The Law of Nations. This work was his claim to fame and won him enough prestige to be appointed as a councilor to the court of Frederick Augustus II of Saxony.