Abstract

The Author analyzes the definition of the war "against pirates" from Antiquity to Modern European thought (Gentili, Ayala, Vattel, Wolff) up to Carl Schmitt's reflection on the impossibility of using this concept within a planetary space where the State is in control of both land and sea. Although in the first half of the XX century the category of war against "predatory States" seemed to lose significance, it acquires today a renewed importance in the deliberate attempts of the Us administration to give juridical form to the "war on terror" of the new Millennium.