CONQUEST OF VIOLENCE

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXX, Issue 13671, 19 June 1942, Page 7

CONQUEST OF VIOLENCE

VIEWS OF U.S. .JUDGE INTERNATIONAL LAWLESSNESS A few days before America entered the war Justice Robert 11. Jackson, of the Supreme Court of America, in an address to the American Bar Association, said: "The American peoples seem to have believed, and same scholars have asserted, that international law can operate by the voluntary acceptance on the part of well disposed powers. But Mr Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out that we cannot test our law by the conduct of the good men who probably behave from moral or social considerations. The test of the efficiency of the law, he said, is the bad man who care.; only for material consequences to himself. Said Holmes:

"'A man who cares nothing for ethical rule which is believed and practised by his neighbours is likely nevertheless to care a good deal to avoid being made to pay money, and will want to keep out of gaol if he can.' "The world is in war to-day chiefly because its civilisation had not been so organised as to impress the 'bad man' with the ahvisability of keeping the peace. "At the end of this war we must either throw the full weight of American influence to the support of an international order based on law, or w T e must outstrip the world in naval aid air, aid perhaps in military, force. No reservation to a treaty can let us have our cake and eat it, too, "The tragedy and the irony of our present position is that we who would make no commitment to support world peace are making contributions a thousandfold greater to support a world Avar. We who would not agree to even economic sanctions to discourage infraction of the peace are now imposing those very sanctions against halif the world in an effort to turn the fortunes of war." After a reference to the Atlantic Charter Mr Justice Jackson said: "Only by well considered steps toward closer international cooperation and more certain justice can the sacrifices which we are resolved to make be justified. The conquest of lawlessness and violence among the nations is a challenge to modern legal and political organising genius.

"Men of our tradition will take up the challenge gladly. We have never been able to accept as an ultimate principle the doctrine that, in vital matters of war and peace, each sovereign power must be free of all restrait except the will and conscience of its transitory rulers. Long ago English lawyers rejected lawlessness as a prerogative of the Crown and bound their king by rules of law so that he might not invade the poorest home without a warrant. In the same high tradition our forefathers set up a sovereign nation whose legislative and executive and judicial branches are deprived of legal power to do many things that might encroach upon our freedoms. "Our Anglo-American philosophy of political organisation denies the concept of arbitrary and unlimited power in any governing body. Hence, Ave see nothing revolutionary or visionary in the concept of a reign of law, to Avhich sovereign nations Avill defer, designed to protect the peace of the society of nations. "We, as lawyers, hold fast to the i£leal of an international order existing under IaAV and equipped With instrumentalities able and Avilling to maintain its supremacy, and Ave renew our dedication to the task of pushing back the frontiers of anarchy and of maintaining justice under the IaAV among men and nations."