Expert in International Law and Practical Promoter of Peace

In the opinion of the lawyer Louis Renault, peace could be brought about by strengthening international law. This was a goal for which he worked untiringly all his life. He tought at the universities in Dijon and Paris, and delivered his last lecture at the age of 75, two days before he died. He was also the French Government's adviser in foreign policy and international law.

Renault was a delegate to the international conferences on transport and communications and on the rights of artists in the 1880s. But it was at the peace conferences at the Hague in 1899 and 1907 that he really gained his reputation as a brilliant lawyer with good practical sense. Renault was especially eager to extend the Geneva Convention to apply also to war at sea. He also sought to have the rights and obligations of neutral states in wartime defined in more precise terms.