WESTPHALIA: A PARADIGM? A DIALOG BETWEEN LAW, ART AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Abstract

It’s in the Westphalia Peace Treaties which resides the “birth certificate” of the modern, national and sovereign State, base of the present democratic State and the founding moment of the contemporary international political system. The importance of those treaties is so clarifying to the understanding of the present models of State and Law that they form a real paradigm, the so-called “Westphalian Paradigm”, outlined by many writers in the fields of Law, Political Sciences and International Relations. In spite of being crucial, the “Westphalian Paradigm” has been very little studied and researched in the very Law field. The origins, implications and characteristics of the State model which is formed after the Thirty Years’ War constitute, always from the Jurisprudence point of view, the core of this paper. The article is concluded with a note about the contemporaneity of that State model referred by the Westphalia Paradigm, under the lights of KUHN´s concept of paradigm.