An Elaborate Artifice

Garry Davis

Did Justice Sonia Sotomayor make the cut? Will she finally don that black robe and preside mandarin-like with the other 11 justices over US law? More relevant, given humanity's problems, does it really matter?

I wish I had been there asking questions of the eminent Judge. All the Republican senators received for answers to their charged questions was her firmly delivered mantra, "I believe in the rule of law" or colloquially, "Catch me if you can." Every time she invoked that catchphrase, my mind soared to the 13 humans, (re astronauts) in the space station whirling around the planet at 17,000+ mph every 90 minutes violating countless national frontier laws every second. I imagined an "International Union of Immigration Frontier Guards" bickering as they prepare a multitude of indictments their separate nation-states would issue for all thirteen if and when they dared "land" into the strictly regimented national space. Its Secretary-General would exclaim "They didn't even have national passports when they lifted off! Outrageous! But we'll get 'em when they come down if only we could resolve what court can sentence them and where it'll put 'em after they're charged with breaking, umpteen national laws a few thousand times all over the whole dern world territory."

What would Judge Sotomayor decide as a Supreme Court judge in the light of this horrendous and blatant example of national frontier violations? Well, let's be frank: nothing. The "rule of law," national or otherwise, doesn't extend 250 miles above the earth's surface. In matter of legal fact, how far "up" (or "out") does national law extend?[1] The Pentagon has claimed unilaterally that "We own space: the next battle-ground." Would Supreme Court Judge Sotomayor support that mad, delusional contention as within the parameters of "constitutional law"? And what about her fellow Supreme Court justices worldwide who attend the yearly meetings at the City Montessori school in Lucknow, India, to affirm their support and devotion to "international law"?[2] Not to mention state officials of China, India, Russia, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, and Canada, all of whom have splattered the space around our planet with their own satellite junk.

Let's face it, the bottom line is, when it comes to the problems we world citizens face, you National-Supreme-Court-Justices-of-the-World, are out-of-synch with war ITSELF; with nuclear weaponry pointed directly at we, the people; (Nations don't die) and with global environmental disaster. The legal framework in which you work is simply obsolete, unreal, and worse, illegitimate! You are adjudicators for a horse-and-buggy, strictly agricultural world while time and distance have imploded around US, the HUMAN RACE ITSELF! "Equal Justice Under Law" must cope with the reality of one instant world. Or else "respect for law" has no meaning.

To put it another way, when war is declared by any given nation, (and the U.S. Constitution condones it)[3], you and your adjudication mandate BECOMES INOPERATIVE: "Inter armes, silent legis" has been each and every nation's motto since their inception. Why? Because the state itself is "above" its national law. In time of threats, its fictional security becomes "sovereign" replacing that of the citizenry.

Is that "legitimate"? And especially in the "Nuclear Age"?[4]

Arthur S. Miller wrote that "In times of declared war..the President acts as a 'constitutional dictator.' In brief, the U.S. Supreme Court's judicial silence on international issues aptly illustrates the impotency of national law to implement fundamental human rights which, by definition, require the protection of "a regime of (world) law."[5]

The very Oath of Office Judge Sotomayor will be obliged to swear to-already three times-is itself a travesty of justice in that it obliges her to defend a 219 year-old constitution in an instantaneous one physical world in which over 95 years ago WORLD WARS HAD ALREADY STARTED!

Tom Paine said it best: "Every age and every generation must be free to act for itself in all cases as the ages and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insulting of tyrannies. The circumstances of the world are continually changing and the opinions of man also change. And as government is for the living and not the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another.."

Given the context of fundamental human rights as set forth generally in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and particularly in the US Constitution's 9^th amendment referring to unalienable rights "retained by the people," as World Citizens-a status also claimed by President Obama in Berlin-we have a vested interest in exposing the irrelevancy of such elaborate artifices as judicial hearings for national supreme court justices.

Even the Founders were caught in that political time warp. In the 18^th century, after fighting a war over the principle of barely evolving democracy (though only for white men with property), yet they had to endow the new president with dictatorial powers vis-a-vis other nations poised to knock the states off one-by-one.[6] (Only Patrick Henry had the courage to walk out of the Congress claiming that the article conferred "discretionary" powers on the president).

The U.S. Constitution, therefore, contains no remedy for the elimination of war itself, much less nuclear weaponry. The national army and navy perform outside the national frontiers in the anarchic area between nations. Indeed, the lack of enforceable world law prohibiting war permits national wars to be fought.

So how, future Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, would your Court respond to that contradictory situation? No precedent, you say? But I myself as a stateless World Citizen, barred from entering the United States, exposed that very anomalous situation in my Writ of Certiorari of August, 1981[7].

The supreme court justices throughout the world are now proclaiming their "allegiance," somewhat fictionally, to "international law," Here is the President of the Supreme Court of Serbia, Madam Justice Leposava Karamarkovic who said[8]: "In conclusion I would like to express my thanks and gratitude to all participants in that conference to debate noble cause to build world judiciary and increase respect toward international law." Then the Honorable Mr. Justice Djalol Isroillov of Tajikistan states[9] that "It is clear that today we have no real active mechanism that would promote effective solution to this global present-time problem such as arms race and annihilation of weapons of mass destruction." The Honorable Madam Justice Janina Stripeikiene, Judge of the Supreme Court of Lithuania maintained[10] that "The purpose of law, apart from protecting certain social values at the time of its validity, is also to ensure the future interests of the society. In order to attain its prospective aims, the law must already provide for effective safeguards of the interests of the future society..such resolutions of the problem, which calls for the contribution of all the states of the world, is the key to the global unity, the lack of which creates new threats to the humanity.." The honorable Madame Justice S. Peeroo, Supreme Court of Mauritius added[11] that "The children of the world as a whole represent the future of humanity.." and that "..sanctions should be imposed on those who endanger life, world ecology and environment. To attain this objective, an effective system of international law is needed with efficient mechanisms and power to impose its application and to sanction any breach of it."

The Honorable Justice Marcus Enfield of the Federal Court of Australia opined[12] that "As we balance perilously upon the threshold of either destructive catastrophe or enforceable international law, we Judges, as pre-eminent representatives of the civilized world, must collectively declare our uncompromising commitment to ensuring a safe and sustainable future for our children..and hold the greatest stake in our establishment of a just world order."

Chief Justice Benjamin Joses Odoki of Uganda claimed[13] before the 30,000 students that "The greatest challenge that faces the world today is securing the survival of human kind. We must develop systems of governance that promote fundamental human rights, peace, security and development."

Indeed, decades ago, even Pope John XXIII stated (in Pacem in Terris) that:

"The common good of all nations involves problems which affect people all the world over: problems which can only be solved by a public authority..whose writ covers the entire globe. We cannot therefore escape the conclusion that the moral order itself demands the establishment of some sort of world government."

While Pope John Paul II expressed essentially the same sentiments:

"The international community should support a system of laws to regularize international relations and maintain the peace in the same manner that law governs national order."

On December 6, 1949, the U.N. General Assembly unanimously endorsed Resolution 375)IV, "Declaration on Rights and Duties of States." Art 14 provides that "Every State has the duty to conduct its relations with other States in accordance with international law and with the principles that the sovereignty of each State is subject to the supremacy of international law."

"It is time to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to reduce the arsenals from another era," said President Obama last July. "This is the moment to begin the work of seeking the peace of a world without nuclear weapons." Last month, President Medvedev declared that his country "is fully committed to reaching the goal of a world free from these most deadly weapons. They and a growing number of hard-nosed realists around the world understand that, as long as nuclear weapons exist, they will continue to spread, increasing the chance that they will be used. Total elimination of all nuclear weapons is the only real solution."

Our world citizenship response to the nation's lack of juridical power to cope with global problems is contained in our own World Court of Human Rights Statute[14] proclaimed June 12, 1974 in Mulhouse, France, the country which, in 1789 proclaimed "La Declaration des Droits de l'Homme et des Citoyens ." I will leave the circumstances for my next blog.

The "elaborate artifice" of a hearing before the US Judicial Committee to replace a departing Supreme Court judge, with either a "liberal" or "conservative," will not effect in the real world any of humanity's major problems of ultimate survival.

That still begs the primordial question for you and me: world law or human extinction?

As Walter Cronkite, a fervent advocate of world government,[15] would have put it: "And that's the way it is."

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[1] The "Outer Space Treaty" of 1967 has been ratified by 98 states.

[2] 150 judges from 150 nations (See www.cmseducation.org/article51)

[3] Via Article I, Section 8, para. 11 and II, Section 2

[4]In July, 1996 the International Court of Justice stated, "It is illegal to threaten to use or to use nuclear weapons." This is interpreted by Francis Boyle in his book, Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, "Nuclear weapons, their components and delivery systems are nothing more than instruments of international criminal activity that are condemned, repudiated and prohibited by international law, including and by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles."

[5] Preamble: Universal Declaration of Human Rights

[6] Hence Article II, Section 2: the war powers of the president when acting as the “Commander-in-chief in the active service of the state.”

[7] No. 81-428

[8] 1^st International Conference on Article 51, Constitution of India held at City Montessori School, Lucknow, Utter Pradish, India, 6^th May, 2001

[9] Ibid

[10] Ibid

[11] Ibid

[12] Ibid

[13] Ibid

[14] See http://www.worldservice.org/wsalstat.html, & Chapter 13,"Is The Individual A Subject of International Law?, World Government, ready or not! (Booksurge, 1984)

[15] See his UN Address, 1999