There's a Will; Is There a Way?

With Asia in flames and the U.N. in shambles, cynics may grimly smile at the notion that "international law" exists--let alone that it can produce international peace. Yet last week, 3,000 jurists met in Washington for the second world conference aimed at turning that dream into reality. With 1,000 delegates from 110 countries, it was the biggest gathering of international jurists in the history of the world.

The conference was the brainchild of Charles S. Rhyne, past president of the American Bar Association, who started a "lawyer-to-lawyer" movement in 1963 with an Athens conference of 1,000 lawyers from 105 countries. Rhyne already has a thriving World Peace Through Law Center in Washington, which is scheduled to be moved next month to permanent headquarters in Geneva. By mobilizing 100,000 lawyers across the world in a campaign of research and publicity, Rhyne hopes to persuade politicians that international law is no myth, that the sheer necessities of global trade and travel are giving birth to hundreds of practical agreements (in aviation, shipping, tariffs, etc.) that can and should lead to "an overall world judicial system."

Ecumenical Spirit. Skeptics could almost believe it last week as the hall filled with Indians and Pakistanis, Israelis and Jordanians. In strode 263 judges from every continent, including bewigged Africans in red robes and five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Even the Magna Carta was on hand--its first trip outside Britain in 750 years. "The law is on the march everywhere," declared Chief Justice Earl Warren. And President Johnson added: "The final objective is the largest and most elusive man has known--peace."

Henry R. Luce, editorial chairman of Time Inc., called his listeners "custodians of man's most reasonable passion--the passion for justice." He saw that passion growing through the "ecumenical spirit" of art, science and commerce, as well as religion.

Deadbeat Defiance. When it came to practicalities, though, many a speaker argued that the rule of law had suffered serious setbacks since the Athens conference. The U.N.-sponsored World Court at The Hague, which aims to settle disputes between nations, is weaker than ever. Since most nations (including the U.S., under the so-called Connally Amendment) reserve the right to ignore its jurisdiction, the court has averaged little more than one judgment a year.

President Johnson acknowledged that "there are those who say the rule of law is a fruitless and Utopian dream. It is true that, if it comes, it will come slowly. But to deny the possibility is to deny peace itself." He still held hope that "we can strengthen the U.N.--not simply as a forum for debate, but as an arena for the solution of disputes." The opposite point of view was taken by Duke University's Arthur Larson, who felt that devastating blows had been dealt the rule of law not only by the India-Pakistan war but also by the U.S. intervention in the Dominican Republic and the bombing of North Viet Nam. "Now people seem to act first and explain later," he complained.

Case by Case. For all that, the conference did produce a consensus that the hope of world law lies in taking small, firm steps. As Richard Nixon advised: "Don't try to build one grand big tent of law and place all mankind's problems under it. Go at it case by case, a bilateral agreement here, a multilateral agreement there. Start with the specific and go to the general." Toward that end, Australian Law Professor Julius Stone urged the jurists to show politicians that "some part of international conflict can be usefully controlled by judicial application." In short and in practice, said Stone, find "concrete areas of conflict which fall within a realistic submission test."

In six days the jurists did indeed pinpoint some concrete areas:

sbTHE WORLD COURT. The U.N. Charter should be amended to provide compulsory jurisdiction, perhaps by means of a two-thirds U.N. vote in each given case. And individuals as well as nations should be entitled to bring cases before it for judgment.

sbREGIONAL COURTS. To take advantage of common cultural ties, such as those among Latin American countries, the world should build a system of regional courts empowered to hear disputes between regional nations as well as individual complaints against those nations.

sbHUMAN RIGHTS. Every region needs a human rights convention like the one that binds European nations. Today, individuals from 15 nations can, in some cases, appeal beyond their own countries' highest courts to the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg, France. Most important, that court has a screening commission that investigates beforehand and thus far has resolved more than 2,200 complaints and passed only two on to the court.

Convincing Duty. At week's end the jurists seemed to have mined a rich lode of legal ideas for the World Peace Through Law Center, which already has more than 60 committees researching the progress and possibilities of everything from disarmament to world habeas corpus. In this, at least, they were harking back to President Johnson's crystalline thesis that "law is the great civilizing machinery. It liberates the desire to build and subdues the desire to destroy. And if war can tear us apart, law can unite us--out of fear, or love, or reason, or all three. Law is the greatest human invention. All the rest give man mastery over his world. Law gives him mastery over himself."

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