THE LAW: The Work of Justice

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"Most Striking Fact." "There is a distinct resurgence of the notion of morality in the law," says Illinois' Justice Walter Schaefer. Reports Indiana's Professor Jerome Hall in the current Virginia Law Review: "The most striking fact about current national developments is the rise of natural law philosophies almost everywhere." Writes Massachusetts' U.S. District Judge Charles E. Wyzanski: "We live in a world where so many revolutions are occurring simultaneously that we clamor for stable principles to which we can anchor faith . . . And nowhere more than in the law is there a demand that we address ourselves to the subordination of the world of fact to the world of value. No one trained in the Anglo-American tradition, who paused to consider what 'law' was as administered by Hitler's judges, or who has tried to grasp the essential theories of Soviet jurisprudence, could remain entirely satisfied with a positivist, empirical approach to his profession."*

Says Mr. Justice Douglas: "In our scheme of things the rights of man are unalienable. They come from the Creator, not from a President, a legislature or a court." And the U.S. Supreme Court recently affirmed the little-noticed but profoundly meaningful decision of a Pennsylvania court in a morals case, which said: "Our federal and state constitutions assume that the moral code which is part of God's order in this world exists as the substance of society."

Peculiarity & Commonality. Upon this understanding of the principle of law stand the A.B.A.'s Rhyne and many advocates of peace through a world rule of law. "Every human community that is regulated by laws and customs," said the second-century-B.C. Roman jurist Gaius, "observes a system of law which in part is peculiar to itself and in part is common to mankind." The peculiarities lie in the forms of laws and their enforcement. But the commonality—on which any system of world law must be built—rests in basic values, in the hunger of mankind for justice under the law and equality before it. "Peace is the work of justice," says one advocate of a world rule of law. And the peaceful settlement of disputes could come through a system of law, founded on what is common to the law of all communities. Says Rhyne: "The vital need for an adequate international system of law remains the greatest gap in the legal structure of civilization."

One approach toward filling that gap is through political organization, e.g., the United Nations. Yet the U.N., although valuable as a political forum, has been no conspicuous success in dispensing international justice, and its International Court of Justice has disposed of about one case a year for the last twelve years. An elaborate plan for strengthening the legal powers of the U.N. is found in World Peace Through World Law, a recently published book by Lawyers Grenville Clark and Louis B. Sohn. They urge revision of the U.N. Charter so as to provide for eventual total disarmament, an international police force, a vastly expanded system of world judicial tribunals.