Twiss

Twiss, SIR TRAVERS, jurist, was born in Westminster, 19th March 1809, and was educated at University College, Oxford. Successively fellow and tutor of his college, a public examiner at Oxford, professor of Political Economy at Oxford (1842-47), and of International Law in King's College, London (1852-55), he became in 1855 professor of Civil Law at Oxford. In 1858 he became Chancellor of the Diocese of London, in 1862 Advocate-general of the Admiralty, Queen's Advocate-general in 1867, being knighted that same year. He served also on various royal commissions. He resigned all his offices in 1872, but thereafter in 1884 drew up for the Belgian King Leopold II. a constitution for the Congo Free State, and in 1885 acted as legal adviser to the West African Conference at Berlin. He died on the 14th January 1897. His writings rank admittedly among the most authoritative on questions of public and international law. Among the most important are View of the Progress of Political Economy since the 16th Century (1847), Lectures on International Law (1856), The Law of Nations (1861), Law of Nations in Times of War (1863), Monumenta Juridica: The Black Book of the Admiralty (4 vols. 1871-76), an edition for the Rolls series of the De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ of Henry de Bracton (6 vols. 1878-83), and Belligerent Right on the High Seas (1884).