As the reader may have noticed, I am still following the thread of International Justice, although the futility of its pursuit under current international conditions has been rather exhaustively proven already, in the first couple of entries in this series.
I do not intend to turn this entry into a lengthy philosophical tractate, therefore, my treatment of the issues involved here cannot possibly pretend to be exhaustive or even adequate to the “gravitas” of the title. There is little for me to add to the academics on this subject anyway, and this is not even my purpose. This entry is a continuation of me making certain specific points with regard to the concept of international justice as it is shaping up under the new world order, and, certainly, with regard to its prospects for the future.
The direct correlation of law and morality, and their natural synthesis in the concept of ethical justice, have been the centerpiece of legal philosophy throughout the ages. That such a correlation must fundamentally exist had been the starting point of all great philosophers, whenever they applied themselves to the subject of jurisprudence. The concept of natural law, whether derived from Plato’s ideas, or directly and indirectly from God (the latter origin cannot be reasonably distinguished from Plato's), has been the cornerstone of the majority of judicial philosophies, somewhat undermined by the down-to-earth strain of positivism and “sociological jurisprudence,” but never going away for good.
Now, this intrinsically idealistic natural law concept in whichever form it may present itself or be presented, is absolutely essential to the viability of our admittedly idealistic concept of International Justice. Without its idealism, however, we shall be bogged down in the technicalities of manifold national environments and circumstances, discovering, at the end of the day, that they are essential incompatible, and thus, effectively, subscribing to the fact of failure of the whole idea of creating an international justice system, as envisaged in the United Nations Charter.
On the other hand, the potent, and also empowering, idea of natural law holds within itself the danger that a single country can lay a unilateral claim to it, establishing its national right to this universal ideal, as several nations have done in the past, and as these days the United States has been vigorously promulgating. In this latter case, history, curiously, appears to be on the side of the American claim, as implied by the Founding Fathers in the 1776 American Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
I have no dispute whatsoever with the wonderful text of this historic Declaration, except that its claim can forever be misinterpreted by less-enlightened American Governments of later generations as their primordial imprimatur to impose their own versions of Pax Americana on the rest of the world, and we are, certainly, witnessing such an attempt today. What is missing, however, from this latest license issue is the fact that in conjunction with the refusal to recognize the authority of the International Court of Justice, Washington’s claim to the possession of the real thing makes a mockery out of one of the greatest political institutions in history, and, perhaps, even the greatest one to date, which is the American Government system, devised by the genius of this nation’s forefathers, and now being trampled into the dust by their lackluster successors. Sic transit gloria mundi!
The good thing about these bad times, though, is that our world has sunk into such turmoil lately, that the mammoth task of creating a workable system of international justice is yet once again coming to the fore… Unless this, too, is a product of my wishful thinking…
I do not intend to turn this entry into a lengthy philosophical tractate, therefore, my treatment of the issues involved here cannot possibly pretend to be exhaustive or even adequate to the “gravitas” of the title. There is little for me to add to the academics on this subject anyway, and this is not even my purpose. This entry is a continuation of me making certain specific points with regard to the concept of international justice as it is shaping up under the new world order, and, certainly, with regard to its prospects for the future.
The direct correlation of law and morality, and their natural synthesis in the concept of ethical justice, have been the centerpiece of legal philosophy throughout the ages. That such a correlation must fundamentally exist had been the starting point of all great philosophers, whenever they applied themselves to the subject of jurisprudence. The concept of natural law, whether derived from Plato’s ideas, or directly and indirectly from God (the latter origin cannot be reasonably distinguished from Plato's), has been the cornerstone of the majority of judicial philosophies, somewhat undermined by the down-to-earth strain of positivism and “sociological jurisprudence,” but never going away for good.
Now, this intrinsically idealistic natural law concept in whichever form it may present itself or be presented, is absolutely essential to the viability of our admittedly idealistic concept of International Justice. Without its idealism, however, we shall be bogged down in the technicalities of manifold national environments and circumstances, discovering, at the end of the day, that they are essential incompatible, and thus, effectively, subscribing to the fact of failure of the whole idea of creating an international justice system, as envisaged in the United Nations Charter.
On the other hand, the potent, and also empowering, idea of natural law holds within itself the danger that a single country can lay a unilateral claim to it, establishing its national right to this universal ideal, as several nations have done in the past, and as these days the United States has been vigorously promulgating. In this latter case, history, curiously, appears to be on the side of the American claim, as implied by the Founding Fathers in the 1776 American Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."
I have no dispute whatsoever with the wonderful text of this historic Declaration, except that its claim can forever be misinterpreted by less-enlightened American Governments of later generations as their primordial imprimatur to impose their own versions of Pax Americana on the rest of the world, and we are, certainly, witnessing such an attempt today. What is missing, however, from this latest license issue is the fact that in conjunction with the refusal to recognize the authority of the International Court of Justice, Washington’s claim to the possession of the real thing makes a mockery out of one of the greatest political institutions in history, and, perhaps, even the greatest one to date, which is the American Government system, devised by the genius of this nation’s forefathers, and now being trampled into the dust by their lackluster successors. Sic transit gloria mundi!
The good thing about these bad times, though, is that our world has sunk into such turmoil lately, that the mammoth task of creating a workable system of international justice is yet once again coming to the fore… Unless this, too, is a product of my wishful thinking…
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