BARBEYRAC, JEAN , French jurist, the nephew of Charles Barbeyrac, a physician of Montpellier, was born at Beziers in Lower Languedoc. Migrating with his family into Switzerland after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, he studied jurisprudence at Geneva and then at Frankfurt-on-Main, and became professor of belles-lettres in the French school of Berlin. Thence, in I L I I, he was called to be professor of history and civil law at Lausanne, and finally settled as professor of public law at Groningen. His fame rests chiefly on the preface and notes to his translation of Pufendorf's treatise De Jure Naturae et Gen tium. In theory he follows closely Locke and Pufendorf ; but he works out with great skill the theory of moral obligation, referring it to the command or will of God. He indicates the distinction, developed more fully by Thomasius and Kant, between the legal and moral qualities of action. The principles of international law he reduces to those of the law of nature, and combats many of the positions taken up by Grotius. He rejects the notion that sov ereignty resembles property, and makes even marriage a matter of civil contract.
Barbeyrac also trans. into French, Grotius's De Jure Belli et Pacis (1724) dedicated to "Sa majeste Britannique, George I."; Cumberland's De Legibus Naturae; and Pufendorf's small treatise, De Officio Hominis peres; a history of ancient treaties contained in the Supplement an grand corps diplomatique, and the curious Traite du jeu (1709), in which he defends the morality of games of chance.