(Latin: “law of nations”), in legal theory, that law which natural reason establishes for all men, as distinguished from jus civile, or the civil law peculiar to one state or people. Roman lawyers and magistrates originally devised jus gentium as a system of equity applying to cases between foreigners and Roman citizens. The concept originated in the Romans’ assumption that any rule of law common to all nations must be fundamentally valid and just. They broadened the concept to refer to any rule that instinctively commended itself to their sense of justice. Eventually the term became synonymous with equity, or the praetorian law. In modern law, there is a distinction between jus gentium privatum, which denotes private international law, otherwise known as conflict of laws, and jus gentium publicum, which denotes the system of rules governing the intercourse of nations.
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