Negro Judge Hopes For Peace Through Law

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31727, 10 July 1968, Page 14

Negro Judge Hopes For Peace Through Law

Optimism that freedom and peace would be achieved through law was the theme of Mr Justice Thurgood Marshall’s address in the Canterbury University Hall last evening. Mr Justice Marshall, of the United States Supreme Court, is visiting New Zealand as a John F. Kennedy memorial fellow. “Wars settle nothing,” he said. “How many more wars must there be before we find that Out? The only peace that will come through war is when all the atom bombs are

fired off. Then there will be peace because there will be no-one here. I believe it is as simple as that.” World peace through law must be the goal of all free-dom-loving people, not just freedom-loving governments. Speaking of the discrepancies between the promise and reality of life in today’s world, he said that America’s two great documents—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—continued to hold out non-fulfilled promises and non-realised aspirations. , The American people were still finding in them new implications and new applications. “Again and again,” he said, “have principles that seemed as simple as platitudes turned out to be battlecries.” But the principles of the

two documents still gave drive and direction, and for that reason he was not worried by the so-called activism of the Supreme Court. “It’s doing what it should be doing,” he said. No matter what the Declaration of Independence said, any democratic or republican form of government was driving towards the same goal—that a child born to the most ignorant, underprivileged and poor person in any country, merely by drawing its first breath in a democratic form of government, was endowed with exactly the same rights as a child born to'the most intelligent and affluent person in the same country. This ideal did not exist anywhere today, said Mr Justice Marshall, and he doubted whether he would live to see it. But he defied anyone to say it was not the sort of goal that should be striven for. He said that those, who took issue with the fast-moving developments in the United States Supreme Court tended

to forget and overlook the idealism laid down ,as the corner-stone of the American Constitution. When that was realised, change was not surprising.

Mr Justice Marshall - said that no-one could do it alone, but while waiting for peace through law to becomes driving force in the world, ■ everyone should do what he could. What was needed above all was faith and belief in peace through law. The problem was the lack of faith in the future of the world in democratic countries. They were the ones who should have faith. He said the Negro minority had been kicked around in the United States, and “sometimes, maybe, when you’ve been kicked around you have a little more faith in what democracy means.” He held up as an example the emerging African States which had just acquired democracy, while countries like New Zealand had had it for more than. 100 years. “It’s old and tarnished,” he said. “Let's drag it out and polish it up and start all over again.” >' , - - . ;