Our goal World peace through law

Title

Language

English

Source

Volume XX (Issue No. 4) April 1968

Year

1968

Subject

Peace

Peaceful settlement of international disputes

International law

International arbitration

International organization

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

OUR GOAL: WORLD PEACE THROUGH LAW It is equally an honor and a pleasure to join with you in this celebration of the adoption of your constitu tion. This is particularly so because I speak to you to night under the auspices of the Philippine Constitution Association dedicated to the defense and preservation of your constitution and the leader in the never ending crusade for the respect of the rule of law. The con tribution of this association is not only working toward law and order in the Phil ippines; it is also making a real contribution to peace through law throughout the world. For, we know that wars settle little. We must realize by now that peace will only come through law. World peace through law must become the goal for all freedom loving people. Our two countries have so much in common that I will talk to you tonight about the development of our constitutional form of gov ernment in the hope that it will give you ideas for the preservation and im provement of yours. It has been said that “The Past is Prologue.” In our country we look to our great immortal documents: the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. They are certainly remark able in the sense that we have managed to endure for nearly two hundred years as an independent constitution al republic — far longer, I suspect, than the framers dared hope. They were, af ter all, fully aware that they were launching an experi ment in statecraft on radical ly new and untried princi ples — which the colective wisdom of the old world regarded as fundamentally misguided and destined for failure. It is easy for us to forget just how novel and April 1968 33 how radical the plans of the framers were. In those days every right-thinking English man knew, for example, that the power of sovereignty must be undivided and un limited. As Blackstone wrote in his Commentaries: “There is and must be in all/forms of government/a supreme ir resistible, absolute, uncon trolled authority, which * * * the right of sovereignty re side.” Yet the framers con ceived a plan of govern ment in which governmen tal powers were not only carefully limited, but also divided up among the branches of government and dispersed among the com ponents of a federal sys tem. Then, too, everyone in those days knew that liberty and stability could be successfully maintained only in a state in which the respective virtues of mo narchy, aristocracy and de mocracy were skillfully com bined and balanced on the model of the British consti tution. That was the learn ing of the ages; it was pro pounded as gospel by such liberal thinkers as Montes quieu. Yet the Americans hope fully, though perhaps with trepidation, gambled on the notion that they could dis pense with King and nobles and that liberty and order could be maintained without the mediating power of a privileged social class. In deed, they called into ques tion the whole time honor ed system of distinctions based on caste, class and birth. These shocking and unprecendented ideas, forged in the years leading up to the Revolution and the Consti tution, have, of course, be come part of the fabric of our national life. And that leads me to suggest a secand respect in which those old documents in the Archives are remarkable. Not only did they launch our government on dan gerously new principles, but they continue to bespeak, after all these years, a con ception of society which con tinues to challenge us, which continues to hold out unfulfilled promises and un realized aspirations. Nearly two centuries have not ex hausted their capacity to de mand re-examination of the status quo and to summon 34 Panorama the energies of reform. Somehow those documents were molded out of elements which set off a chain re action in the minds of men which has persisted down to this day and continues to stir all who can perceive the discrepancies between the promise and the reality of American life. I think it is very clear in Washington today — in the Congress and the Executive and, not the least, the Sup reme Court — that activity and change are being pro moted by the transforming logic of principles which were first glimpsed here as colonists thought their way to independence. Nor are these stirrings confined to Washington. Throughout the country, wherever the disenfranchised are being registered to vote, wherever schools are being desegre gated, wherever election dis tricts are being more fairly apportioned, wherever indigents are being afforded counsel to secure their rights, in a hundred polling places and a hundred court rooms, those ideas are on the march. And so I think that if we want to know what is happening and where we are and where we are going, we do well to recall where we started. What is past is prologue. A few decades ago it was the fashion among American historians to see the events of the period leading up to the Revolution and the Constitutional convention as the result of the struggle of classes and economic forces in which ideas and ideals played a subordinate role — largely as camouflage for what was really going on. More recent scholarship has focused anew on what men said and have redis covered the extent to which things were swept along by the force of ideas.1 Once embarked on the problem of rationalizing their relation ship with Great Britain, the Americans found themselves led, step by step, to reexa mine and reject most of the received, accepted, orthodox principles of social organiza tion and to fashion new prin ciples for a new society. Not all the implications of those new principles were seen at once, or being seen were acted on. Indeed, they were so radical, so pregnant with April 1968 35 change, that we are still finding new implications, new applications, and new aspects of life are being sub jected to their transforming power. After all these years, some of the reasonable in ferences to be drawn from such notions as the equality of man continue to take a lot of people by surprise. Again and again through out our history, principles which seemed as familiar as platitudes have turned out to battle cries. Let me give you a few ex amples of what I mean. When the Americans became concerned with the prob lem of taxes levied by Par liament in which they had no voice, they were told what every good Englishman knew, that Parliament repre sented ajl citizens — not actually, but “virtually” — and that Americans were virtually represented in the same way as were the in habitants of Manchester and Birmingham, who also had no vote and elected no re presentatives. This of course led to analysis of the nature of representative govern ment, and to the conclusion that if Manchester and Bir mingham were not actually represented, they ought to be; that the capacity to re present and legislate arises only from the election of those represented; that a le gislature should be “in mi niature and exact portrait of the people at large” and that “equal interests among the people should have equal in terests in it * * * increas/ing/ or decreas/ing/ with the number of inhabitants.”2 That thought, published in Philadelphia by John Adams, is translated in our time as “one man — one vote,” and serves as the impulse under lying Baker v. Carr3 and Sims4 and the whole drive for legislative reapportion ment. That radical novelty has been lurking all these years in the history books we give to children. Sooner or later someone was bound to read it. It has been said, of course, that whatever the merits of redistricting, it is no busi ness of the courts. The co lonists had been over that ground. Faced with an om nicompetent Parliament, they had said that there was, or ought to be, a law superior to Parliament. And from 36 Panorama there they proceeded to ar gue, as one lawyer did as early as 1761, not only that an act of Parliament “against the constitution is void” but that it was the duty of the courts to “pass such acts into disuse.”6 Judicial re view by an independent judi ciary was soon seen as the sine qua non of constitu tional government, and in a few years they were to list among their grievances against the King that “He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.” Let me give you another example. While pursuing their problems with Eng land, the Americans began to stumble over the largely local problem of religious establishments, supported, maintained, and sanctioned with varying force in each of the colonies. Could meh properly be taxed to support churches to which they did not belong? Was it con sistent to demand political liberty from England while denying liberty of conscience to dissenters at home? Did a government of limited po wers have any business le gislating on man’s relation ship to his Maker? And shortly John Adams, a pillar of the established church of Massachusetts, concluded that no legislature has “power to enact articles of doctrine or forms of dis cipline or modes of wor ship.”6 Do you catch an in timation that perhaps the New York Board of Regents has no business drafting prayers for school children? Established religion was not the only institution which came under scrutiny. Emanations of the new thinking spread out, unex pectedly, in all directions. Once it had been suggested to Parliament that all men are born free, the embarassing discrepancy between the professed principle of free dom and the reality of a half-million Negro slaves could not readily be over looked. The incompatibility of slavery and freedom did not go unnoticed. In the decade before the revolution, the institution of slavery and the laws which up-held it came under increasingly forceful attack. A citizen of Philadelphia, Richard April 1968 37 Wells demanded of his fel low citizens: How can we “reconcile our exercise of slavery with our profession of freedom.”8 He could find no basis for harmonizing the two, and neither could any one else. In the early 1770’s several of the future states prohibited the importation of slaves; some ruled that any slaves imported should auto matically become free; and in April 1776 Congress proscribed further importa tion of slaves into any of the colonies. Of course, tragically for the future of the nation, slavery was not disposed of. There was com promise and backsliding. The Constitution recognized and protected slave-holding. But the incongruity of slavery in- a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the equality of all men had been perceived, and that per ception floated through our history like an iceberg — awaiting the inevitable col lision. And not only slavery, but also the caste system which was eventually subs tituted for it stood condemned — not by the Supreme Court or by Congress but, from the outset, by the very princi ples on which the nation was launched. And so as we struggle to cut the knots tied by the long years of bond age, of cradle-to-grave segre gation, of disfranchisement, of unequal protection of the law, we are still reaching out for the first principles of our national life. And it is those principles, which we dare not deny, which point the way to Brown v. Board of Education9 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In this and in other areas of concern, it is because those principles still give drive and direction that I am not troubled by the much criticized so-called ac tivism of the Supreme Court. It seems clear to me that the Court has been doing what it is supposed to be do ing. It is trying, as it must, to bring law into congruity with the constituent assump tions of our society. It is undeniable that in recent years the Court has worked far-reaching and, for some, disturbing changes in the patterns of our communal life. But those who are dis mayed by these fast-moving developments and have taken 38 Panorama issue with the Court have mistaken the source of their distress. But I think that we have tended to forget or to overlook the extent to which a demanding, and potential ly transforming, idealism was laid down as the very corner stone of our constitutional system. If that fact is grasp ed, change is less surprising. If you set out on a voyage of discovery, you will pro bably put in at unexpected ports. We have not come to the end of the road; it is not even in sight. Do we deny the equality of all men be fore the law when many lack effective representation by counsel? Do we perpetuate distinctions of birth when many children are condemhed to grow up in slums? Do we obstruct the pursuit of happiness when many are denied an opportunity for an adequate education? I could go on; and we will go on. The Past is Prologue. If we take the experience of the past of our country and combine this with the expe rience under your Constitu tion, I am sure we can face the future with confidence. One thing we know, neither Constitution is perfect. Neither Constitution will ever be perfect until all of us shoulder our responsibility to make them work. We can not wait for each citizen to do this. Rather, we shall work with those who are willing. PHILCONSA is leading the good example. If we have more organiza tions like PHILCONSA throughout the world we would be much closer to our goal of World Peace Through Law. What we need more than anything else is faith in our own governments — faith in our own Constitutions — faith in our own laws. Se condly, we need determina tion and willingness to work within these laws. We must? insist on government of laws — not government of men. Thirdly, we must realize that true democracy, a lasting peace requires hard work by all peoples. So, I close with two final admonitions. One is an old true statement: “Eternal Vigilance is the price of Peace.” And another old but true statement repeated by President Johnson just a (Turn to page 45) April 1968 39 luxury devotes much of its energy. Group discussion sections should not be a re medial program for those who routinely cut the lectures and do not bother to read the material. The discussions should be the digestive sys tem of the course. Tutors with no authority to compel students to keep appoint ments will inevitably end up playing pinochle among themselves. Yes, after a year at Parsons, even after a year at Par sons, I do believe in a secondchance college. But the col lege I believe in does not yet exist, and will only appear as the result of honesty, hu mility, idealism, and a deep belief in the value of knowl edge itself. It will have to be a better college than the "first-chance” ones. — Robert G. Collins in The Journal of Higher Education. OUR GOAL . . . (Continued from page 39) week ago: "No Country and no man ever stands as tall as when he falls on his knees before God.” — Thurgood Marshall, Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, speech before the Philippine Constitution Association. April 1968 45

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