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Charter Amendments For A Real U.N. Judicial System
Thank you for the honor of speaking to this august body of
judges from around the world. As an international
trial lawyer, it is very rare that I am presented with the
opportunity to lecture judges rather than the other way
around. I only hope that I am up to the challenge of
inspiring each of you to join the crusade I am about to
describe.
As President of One World Now, I am, with many others from
many of the Nations in the world, spearheading a vigorous
movement to bring about a new, or comprehensively amended,
Charter of the United Nations. It is our irrepressible
goal to create a United Nations that is democratized and
empowered so that it can effectively deal with the crises we
are facing in this century. Collectively, these crises
signal a not so subtle descent into brutal times. You
know, as well as I do, what these crises are: wars,
proliferating weapons of mass destruction and global
terrorism; persistent hunger and extreme poverty, with over
a billion human beings living on less than $1 per day;
increasingly severe natural disasters; climate change,
continued pollution of the oceans, disappearing rain forests
and contamination of our rivers, lakes, air, soil and
wetlands; pandemics such as AIDS and Avian Flu; brutal
genocide, human trafficking, and other human rights abuses;
excessive population growth in some countries and ominous
depopulation and loss of sperm counts in other nations;
unstoppable soil erosion and desertification; the disgrace
of over 30,000 children dying each day from hunger,
malnutrition and preventable diseases; and the terrible
consequences being inflicted upon the world by our insane
habit of throwing over a trillion dollars a year down the
black hole of arms, war and killing each other.
These global, interconnected, worsening and converging
crises have humankind approaching the Rubicon and they must
be confronted now. To wait any longer is to invite
disaster. Indeed, there is a gathering storm of these
crises, a “creeping Armageddon,” that is ominously
overtaking us.
 But,
how does human society save itself from itself? Do we
just continue to rely upon the Nation-State system and the
international anarchy in which we live? Cannot we now
see that the Nation-State system – which has been with us
since the Treaty of Westphalia, and which has just taken us
through the bloodiest and dirtiest (pollution-wise) century
in the history of human-kind – simply is not capable of
dealing with these crises? And is it not clear that
the United Nations, as presently constituted – with no real
power in the General Assembly and with the single-nation
veto in the Security Council – is also incapable of dealing
with these global threats to our survival? I do not
see how we can avoid the conclusion that the world must
turn to a global structure of governance that does
have the power to take the necessary action for our own
salvation.
One World Now has been working for the last 13 years to
determine what the vehicles are for creating the kind of
democratized and empowered structure of governance we must
have and we have concluded that there is only one
such vehicle and that is the United Nations itself.
This is because the United Nations is the only global
structure with a built-in legitimization process, Article
109. Simply stated, Article 109 provides for a
three-step mechanism for legally creating a structure of
global governance.
Now, comes the hard part. If we can
generate a Charter Review Conference under Article 109, what
kind of new Charter do we need? Clearly, the core
principles must be these:
1. The first is that the U.N. must be
democratized; “we the people” must have real meaning through
a legislative body that is, as Abraham Lincoln put it, “of
the people, by the people and for the people.”
2. The second is that the new United Nations
must have the power to enforce the laws adopted by it.
3. Third, perhaps the most important is that the
new United Nations must be a “government of law, and not of
men.” This means that the rule of law must be embedded
in the new Charter with regard to all of its functions and
the new Charter must provide for a “real” judicial system.
By “real”, I mean the following:
a. First, the system must include trial courts,
an intermediate level of appellate courts and the Supreme or
World Court, which will be the court of last resort.
b. Second, those trial courts and appellate
courts must be placed around the world so that the courts
are accessible to the people.
c. Third, the rulings and decrees of this court
must have the force of law and must be enforced.
d. Fourth, these courts must not only have
jurisdiction to interpret and enforce the laws of the United
Nations but it must have the jurisdiction to resolve
disputes between Nations and their subordinate political
bodies; between citizens of one Nation against citizens of
another; and between citizens of the same Nation where the
court system of that Nation refuses or fails to provide a
court for the adjudication of the dispute in question.
e. Fifth, the jurisdiction of the U.N. Courts
must be compulsory – that is, no Defendant will have the
discretion to reject jurisdiction, as the United States did
before the World Court when it was sued by Nicaragua for
mining its harbors during the Iran-Contra episode.
f. Sixth, the new U.N. should create a
“Judicial Task Force” to work with national judicial systems
around the world in an effort to improve them and make them
more efficient, just and expeditious. As I have found
in my work as an international trial lawyer, the judicial
systems in many countries need to be improved. I don’t
believe I need to tell any of you this.
In the first place, the
absence of an expeditious trial or resolution plagues too
many court systems in too many countries – taking anywhere
from 5 to 10 to 15, even 20 years to complete the resolution
of civil cases. And we all know what the U.S. State
Department, and its Country Reports, say about corruption in
the court systems of many countries I don’t necessarily
agree with all of these Reports and, I will say this – we
have a more subtle form of corruption in many of the
American court systems.
But, the point is that, while
we all believe that the rule of law is absolutely necessary
if we are going to have a just and equitable global society,
that “rule” must be efficient, expeditious and honest.
After all, no one can deny the principle that “justice
delayed is justice denied.”
So, the U.N. “Judicial Task
Force” will have its work cut out for it. And will
have to go about that work with sensitivity, making certain
that it does not offend the Nation States, whose judicial
system it is seeking to improve.
g. Seventh, and most important, I want to say
something that many of you may appreciate. The a new
U.N. Court system should, I believe, provide for jury trials
in civil, as well as criminal cases. I know that this
will be a new experience for most of the world, as far as
civil cases are concerned, because, except for the United
States and a few provinces in Canada and Australia,
presently no jury trials are allowed in civil cases
in the other Nations of the World.
But, the right of trial by
jury is a precious right that all World Citizens should
have. Having a “jury of one’s peers” to resolve the
facts of a case is so important to a fair and just
adjudication. You, as Judges, know that when you are
required to decide the facts of the same types of cases over
and over again it is difficult not to become jaded and to
give a fresh and objective view to each new similar case.
In any event, I hope all of you, as Judges, will join us in
our efforts to generate an Article 109 Charter Review
Conference. And, once the Conference is called, I
invite each of you then to help us get adopted a Charter
that will bring about a democratized and empowered U.N.,
with the kind of judicial system that I have just suggested.
As Judges, you are very respected in your communities and in
the Nations in which you serve and your support will be
crucial to the success of our efforts. It is through
just such efforts that I hope we can attain that noble goal
of global governance and, through such governance, bring
about a global society where we can all live together in a
world without war, without oppression, without poverty and
without the environmental decay that now afflicts us. |
