One Legal World

"Is a law of the world possible?" So asked Roscoe Pound, 87, dean from 1916 to 1936 of Harvard Law School and still a dean among U.S. legal scholars, at a Brooklyn Bar Association meeting last week. His answer: not only is a law of the world possible, but it will probably precede any sort of sense-making world state. Tossing aside his 7,000-word manuscript, Dean Pound went on to deliver it practically verbatim from memory, was interrupted only once, when he was offered--and spurned--a chance to speak from his chair. From the first "crude attempts" at organized social control, he said, the law has gone through four stages of development: 1) the strict law, e.g., Roman law, composed of a set of completely rigid rules, 2) equity and natural law, insisting on reason and morality over mere rules, 3) maturity of law, based on equality of individual rights and recognizing property and contract as fundamental ideas, and 4) socialization of law, transferring its emphasis from individual to social interests.

Common but Uncommon. "In successive stages of development of the legal order each later stage builds upon the preceding stage. To the principle of certainty established by the strict law the stage of equity and natural law adds the upholding of morals; the maturity of law adds to both the promoting and maintaining of the demands and expectations of the individual human being; and to all this the socialization of law is adding the promoting and maintaining of the expectations common to all men in a world where we must live and move and have our being in cooperation with our fellow men."

It has been assumed that "to have a world law we must have a world state; that universal political organizations must come before universal law. May it not be rather that universal law must precede the universal state which will undertake to put any required force behind it? There is abundant evidence that there may be a generally recognized and accepted body of principles to which men are expected to adhere in their relations with others . . ."

Independent but Uniform. "In the world we know, a world state seems hardly attainable. But, as the common law of the English-speaking world [proves], a world law for world relations is attainable. Moreover, uniformity of commercial law in continental Europe and among the states of the U.S. is brought about by independent uniform legislation in the several counties and states, not by the overriding legislation of a superstate.

"A world law may eventually lead to a world state when the world becomes prepared for it. But the essential thing is a world legal order--a world regime of due process of law."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.