Abstract

The first crisis of the "Jus publicum europaeum" takes place between the second half and the end of the XVIII century. This system of juridical and political norms had eliminated the discriminatory concept of "just war", claiming that just - that is, juridically founded - is the war pursued by sovereign states, beyond and above any specific motivation of conflict. In this context, some authors extended the neutralization of the actual conflict also to the civil war, attributing equal legitimacy to both contenders. Some others instead, recognized the civic fight, proposing anew the tomistic concept of "justum bellum". This led to the theoretical giving way to the European "world civil war", determined by the French Revolution.