World Peace

World Peace through World Law. Peace requires law, world peace requires world law.


The simplicity of truth, but explanations are needed for each word, to flesh out and give body to this most vital of truisms. Peace means above all, absence of war, which is the breakdown of trust, of civil community and of normal life. It does not mean a mythical state of tranquility not observed on earth, something for sages, dreamers, philosophers and prophets.

Law requires clarity, precision, humanity and publicity. It has to be fair in order to achieve justice rather than tyranny and none of these are easy to come by. It requires, further, the institutions to make it accessible to the subjects and it also procedures designed specifically to ensure that fairness, i.e. the rule of law.

Furthermore, it requires institutions to enable action to be coherent, consistent and effective in bringing all these desiderata to fruition.

Our world had institutions - the United Nations is a prime example - but they are neither effective nor capable of producing the peace that our world needs. because they do not fulfill the criteria for success in this endeavour. They are defective in a number of ways: they are attempts, but attempts frustrated by not being radical enough and by not being based upon the principles that would be essential for them to succeed.

For example, international law is a half-hearted attempt to make law, but fails for one simple reason.
It does not hold individual people as its subjects, but instead tries to make nations or states, law-abiding. Accordingly, it faces immense difficulties in every aspect of its application, as witness the arguments about guilt that rage around the actions of governments involved in disputes of every sort in world affairs.

World law has to apply to individuals, not to nations. Thus for the first time, world law emerged clearly was in the establishment of the International Criminal Court. Although its approach has been at time faltering, the indictment of Milosevitch for his responsibility in wars following the break-up of Yugoslavia showed what now has to be done to act against war crimes. The classic prior case of such action was, of course, the trial of Nazi war leaders in the Nuremberg Tribunal in 1946.

John Roberts