Vattel

Emer de Vattel’s highly influential 1758 treatise, “The Law of Nations,” described this power as plenary: “The sovereign may forbid the entrance of his territory either to foreigners in general, or in particular cases, or to certain persons, or for certain particular purposes, according as he may think it advantageous to the state.”

The president borrowed The Law of Nations by Emer de Vattel on 5 October 1789, according to the records of the New York Society Library.

The length of Johnson’s loan was epic, but she would still have a way to go to match George Washington: he proved a very bad borrower with The Law of Nations by Emer de Vattel, which the first US president checked out more than 200 years ago and never returned.

Even George Washington neglected to return The Law of Nations by Emer de Vattel and a volume of debates from the English Parliament to the elites-only New York Society Library.

Arguably, Thomas Jefferson, who had based his Declaration of Independence on a genuinely intimate familiarity with Locke, Vattel, Hobbes, Grotius, Rousseau and Montesquieu, was the most learned of all.