RICHARD BLUM
The World Equity Court faces an uncertain future
Many will remember when a 1975 US commemorative postage stamp honored the World Peace Through Law Center, proclaiming it to be “the most comprehensive private effort ever undertaken to attain a peaceful world order with justice.”When the organization was conceived after World War II, presidents and popes were enthusiastic supporters, along with prime ministers and chief justices. The democratically generated rule of law for an enlightened,moral world became a rule of faith as well—a political parousia of peace and justice. Foes at that time were the communist nations and post-colonial imbedded despotisms, although even some of the latter, always pleasing at UN cocktail parties, smiled the agreeable rhetoric. The die were, we thought, well cast.
The Cold War is over and many, if not most, post-colonial nations have been democratized. Much of post- World War II hope has become realized in a multitude of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) under or associated with the United Nations. The Center, now associated with the World Jurist Association (WJA), an NGO with special consultative status at the UN Economic and Social Council, is active in international education and exchange, and helps develop mediation training for developing nations. The Center/WJA also sponsors world meetings where major issues are argued in moot courts, often with chief justices from the high courts of various nations presiding and host nation ministers participating.
In part because of its success, the role of the Center/WJA is much diminished today. The Center’s founding ideals have been institutionalized independently and broadly, and there are no shortages of international treaties, non-governmental organizations, and faith-based and other humanitarian international organizations embracing those founding ideals. The expanding networks of transnational cooperating regulatory, information exchanging, and investigative agencies, along with international professional organizations and forums, are helping to realize the principles of the Center/WJA. The 2003 UN Anti-Corruption Treaty, World Trade Organization, and the European Union stand as examples. Law schools and legal organizations around the globe, including the American Bar Association and the London-based Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, have initiated international centers and exchange programs aimed at training judges throughout the world.
All of these developments are admirable. Yet the guns roar, and hopes for world peace and order under international comity and justice are dramatically dimmed. In the face of such progress, and also retrogression, what else might the Center/WJA conceive and achieve? Is there any hope of an expanded international law based on mutually understood and accepted standards of common decency and accepted definitions of morality?
| As the regional test forums begin to hear cases, the blueprint for this cross-cultural experiment in the possibility of common morality no doubt will evolve. | |
THE IDEA OF THE COURT...
The need for the Court arises in response to currently unaddressed, irremediable, and harmful activities —including financial crimes and actions by ordinary enterprises—which are transnational or, thus, “global” in nature and/or scope. The Court would develop and apply ethical principles and rules of fairness in laws applicable globally. It is to become an instrument recommending individual remedy, assigning responsibility, and inductively promulgating general rules that are internationally adaptable and potentially enforceable. Initially, its only power will be that of persuasive morality via the media and other supportive organizations or individuals. Upon successfully demonstrating that high court justices and eminent laymen, as “embedded” jurors from diverse cultural and legal backgrounds, do agree on moral matters where unremedied harm has been done to individuals or groups of individuals, it is expected that the Court will be legislated by treaty.
By demonstrating the applications of an expanded rule of law throughout the world, the Court will fill a niche in the global judiciary system. It offers a global mechanism to address immediately gross wrongs suffered by individuals, typically members of large classes who are victimized, powerless, and inadequately represented. These may be, for example, consumers, persons environmentally harmed, those suffering directly as a result of demonstrable corruption (including failed due process), and those victimized by international criminal entrepreneurs. Demonstrated severe inflicted suffering by individuals or groups of individuals is one major criterion for case selection. This criterion arises from the new discipline of “panetics” developed by Ralph Siu (CC 1965-1998), a scientist, high-level administrator in the US Department of Justice, writer, and Taoist philosopher.
The Court’s purpose is to provide guidelines and education leading toward eventual global regulation that enhances equity in law, i.e., formulating understandable rules and implementing mutually agreed principles of fairness and “common morality.”The Court will operate under the principle of universal individual citizen access for cases where serious personal harm has been done. Cases are limited to those originating from transnational actions where responsible agents are not in the nation where injury is incurred, or where in that locale such classes of harmful events are unregulated and/or due process is unavailable.
The Court will be attentive to any pertinent international law, multilateral agreements, and administrative codes that may be applicable to a given situation for which remedy is sought, but equity as fairness and decency remains its central tenet. In the developmental phase, the Court will assure Internet-accessible library sources for its several regional forums to test the possibility of substantive and procedural cross-cultural agreement. Key to its initial success will be gauging whether there can be agreement among jurists from multiple cultures on standards for case selection and application of certain emerging principles.
The ultimate success of the World Equity Court depends on its wide acceptance by various publics, scholars, commentators, legislators, and, thus, the evolving politics and law defining and implementing globally accepted concepts of morality. Through its presence, actions, and communicated image, the Court intends to generate greater citizen confidence in “the law” as it offers remedies under conditions of globalism. It offers the possibility of humane regulation compatible with innovation and growth—economic, intellectual, and artistic—as attainable standards for cross-border activities. The Court is to embrace the idea of a protective justice based on fairness and morality globally defined, giving “the law”a worldwide human face. One day, perhaps, will come “peace through law.”
...AND THE INITIAL STEPS
These goals are grand, and perhaps impossible to achieve in full. They are part of a global fabric of better governance and human welfare assisted through the rule of law.Working within the WJA mandate “to encourage judges, lawyers, law professors, and others from around the world to work cooperatively to raise public support for the institutions that govern and enforce the administration of international law,” the task of the Commission of the World Equity Court is to get the Court off to a running start.
With the overall structure and the principle of “panetics” in place, the Commission will spend the next two years developing the regional forums in China, Malaysia, London, and Bulgaria. For each regional forum, there will be a judicial panel composed of seven judges, one of whom will be from the host country. Two additional judges will be assigned to advocacy roles, one representing the plaintiffs, and one for the defense.With this structure, there is no financial cost to any party appearing before the regional forum.
Each panel will have no more than one justice from any one nation, and will have Western, Islamic, and Chinese appointees. The initial selection of judges will come from the Commission high court members, but all nations knowledgeable about equity law and capable of nominating ethical judges will be asked to nominate panelists.
The Court will use these regional forums as test sites with respect to procedures, case priorities, and consensus building. Cases will be invited from human advocacy and health groups, trade impact observers, legal scholars, and the media. The jurists, or “Panel of Experts” hearing each case, are expected to come from the disciplines of economics, social sciences, religion, philosophy, and the humanities, as well as the law. Panelists also will be sought from consumer, health, environmental, humanitarian, and other advocacy groups, as well as legal and regulatory monitoring agencies. As the regional test forums begin to hear cases, the blueprint for this cross-cultural experiment in the possibility of common morality no doubt will evolve.
SUPPORT FROM MANY QUARTERS...
The Center’s founding was endorsed and supported by US presidents Truman, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Johnson, and Ford, and by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The chief justices of India, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the International Court of Justice also were founding fathers.
In October 1975, the Center’s 7th World Conference was attended by representatives from Italy, India, Lebanon, the Philippines, Congo, China, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Thailand, Australia, Canada, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Finland, France, Indonesia, Iceland, Pakistan, Mexico, Yugoslavia,West Germany, Barbados, and Peru. In addition, presiding as judges at the International Demonstration Trial Court were the chief justices of Norway, Israel, Trinidad and Tobago, Sudan, Ireland, and Finland. President Gerald Ford and US Chief Justice Warren Burger were honorary chairs.
These auspicious beginnings are mirrored by support today from a number of retired judicial sponsors, including Nagendra Singh and Prince Ajibola of Nigeria, former justices with the International Court of Justice; and Chief Justice Ahmadi of India, Chief Justice Saario of Finland, Justice Ribicic of Slovenia, and Justice Sonobe of Japan.
The World Peace Through Law Center and its goals also have been embraced by a number of governments around the globe. In China, the University of Political Science and Law, a Ministry of Justice training ground for government administrators, prosecutors, and judges, will serve as the regional court forum hearing cases deriving from East Asia and the Pacific nations. Here, as in each regional forum, the developing court forum is to serve as a teaching opportunity in the development of cross-cultural juristic harmony and fairness-oriented proposals for the content of international law. China also will play active host to the 2005 meetings of the Center/WJA.
In the Islamic world, there is support for the concept of equity in international law. Scholars of the Hanafi branch of moderate Islamic thought have provided guidance on the design of the World Equity Court. The International Islamic University in Malaysia will be the regional forum site.
The University of London’s Institute for Advanced Legal Studies (IALS) will be the host forum for cases from Europe and the Commonwealth countries. The IALS will provide panelists for the regional forums, drawing from the Institute’s distinguished faculty and, presumably, its executive board, which includes LawLords, as well as from the judges and legal scholars of the IALS-associated Society for Advanced Legal Studies. In the former Eastern bloc, many lawmakers have joined the Center/WJA, including justices from the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Bulgaria will be a forum site for cases from the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
..AND THE OPPOSITION
Big ideas tend to run into big barriers, and a number of individuals and statesmen have stated their opposition to the World Equity Court proposal. Worldly friends and colleagues have been fierce. A college chum told me, “I hate the thought of US policy being at the mercy of cannibals, Islamic crazies, and effete European politicians. We have our own madmen; we don’t need theirs.” An esteemed, highly idealistic European high court justice simply said, “It won’t work. It’s too idealistic. Nobody has any experience of this sort.” A US law faculty member said, “You should know better. No law school in the country would touch this idea [to serve as a forum test site].”
There also was conspicuous silence from many eminent colleagues abroad I had thought game enough to volunteer to serve as jurists for the regional test forums. These included retired senior European Union officials, diplomats, jurists, and legal and humanitarian greats. I had, it seems, floated a lead balloon in advocating the idea of such a “radical” court.
In some cases, the opposition to the proposed international Court may be morally based. Some might argue it is futile to seek universal codes of morality or decency. But ethicists, philosophers, and poets seem to find common ground, so it does not seem too much of a stretch to see international jurists finding mutually agreedupon standards of fairness in judging severe non-political harm done.
Others may be wary of any international court as a threat to sovereign constitutional powers and duties. An administrative body over which the United States has no veto power, some critics argue, would diminish any one country’s ability to make stick its opposition or reservations. To these critics, there would be no reason to abdicate power to the United Nations or The Hague, either. Many lawyers are disturbed by a court which incorporates jurors, is simplified and non-technical, and denies paid advocates.Xenophobes may ask,“What kind of foreigners might be invited to serve on an international bench?”
Those who are not in favor of the World Trade Organization or globalization in general will fear the Court “gone wrong” as a vehicle for enforcing the rights of dehumanizing, profit-obsessed, uncontrolled enterprises, giving them free rein to serve and, of course, sometimes cheat, stockholders and the market. And those who are critical of non-governmental organizations in general would find fault with the Center/WJA for being a part of the UN/NGO network. To these critics, the NGOs are but self-congratulatory networks aimed at subverting or dominating world governments, even though they exist only through UN approval, and not by approval of any public or national regional legislative bodies
Those taking a strong stance against imperialism also might find grounds to oppose the expansion ofWestern ideals of democratic law,much as they might oppose the spread of Western power and technology. Militant Islamic fundamentalists,Myanmar despots, and perhaps even Zapatista natives, as well as our home-grown tribal rights separatists, likely would reject the World Equity Court as yet another new banner of Western law designed to protect the rights and interests of the Western imperial system. History, after all, would support their case: Justinian could be cited as an earlier hostile example, as codifier of rules for Roman imperial administration.
Some of these issues have been debated formally at Cosmos Club functions, although without reference either to the proposed new Court or the principles of Ralph Siu’s focus on “panetics,” with regard to the comparative evaluation for policy purposes of major sources of inflicted suffering. These principles will be applied to case selection for a World Equity Court intended to further alert us to, expand our ability to deal with, and propose justice for, now-unmet ills arising from nongovernmental, major transnational transactions.
In the 1990s, globalism was the buzz word, though there was perhaps too little thought about protecting those who might be the losers in a globalized, harmonized world. The 21st century already is off to tumultuous beginnings. These issues, as we see, also affect the Court, and may have an impact on whether governments or private foundations are willing to support the experimental beginnings of the World Equity Court. These are issues upon which to reflect and debate, both within the Cosmos Club and in broader political and legal forums. These debates will be critical, as these issues stand to have an enormous impact on the expansion of world justice, and on the future of many of the planet’s inhabitants.
Richard Blum (CC ’75) is coordinator for, and deputy chairman nominee of, the Commission for the World Equity Court, Center for World Peace Through Law/World Jurist Association, based in Washington, DC.
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