The language of constitutional government, scientific inquiry, freedom of conscience, religious toleration, and universal rights owes much to eighteenth-century philosophy. More than any other intellectual movement of the modern era, the Enlightenment claimed that reason could discover principles valid not merely for particular nations or religions but for humanity itself. Universalism became one of its defining aspirations. It has also become one of its greatest controversie

The seizure of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro by the United States marks a profound rupture with the legal and normative constraints that have structured international order since 1945. Whatever the moral judgment of Maduro’s regime, the episode raises a far more consequential question: on what grounds can a sovereign head of state be forcibly removed by another country, and what follows when law is replaced by power? The Stated Grounds and the Evidentiary Problem The T