G. Edward Griffin - The Fearful Master - PDF Archive

India or Communist Poland, and these countries charged that we were not living up to our
Charter obligations, what would the World Court decide?
If Fidel Castro charged the United States with threatening international peace and security
by keeping its naval base at Guantanamo, what would the World Court decide?
There are fifteen justices on the World Court. Article 25 of the Statute of the International
Court of Justice says that nine judges constitute a quorum for the Court to do business,
and a majority of the nine can render judgments. This means that five judges can
determine decisions. The statute also states: "The Court may, from time to time, form one
or more chambers composed of three or more judges, as the Court may determine, for
dealing with particular categories of cases; for example, labor cases and cases relating to
transit and communications." In other words, in some matters, decisions can be rendered
by as few as two justices!
Of the fifteen justices on the United Nations World Court, most come from strongly leftist
or Communist countries. The United States is represented on this Court by Philip Jessup,
whose background with Alger Hiss and the Institute of Pacific Relations has already been
discussed.
What would the World Court decide?
When the United States joined the United Nations, it automatically became a member of
the World Court. But it was not bound by the Court's jurisdiction unless and until it filed a
formal declaration in the form of a Senate ratified treaty. Senator Wayne Morse introduced
in the Senate a resolution "recognizing as compulsory . . . the jurisdiction of the
International Court of Justice in all legal disputes hereafter arising . . . provided that such
declaration shall not apply to disputes with regard to matters which are essentially within
the domestic jurisdiction of the United States." [Italics added.] 6 Suspecting that there might
be a little difficulty in the future definition of matters "essentially within the domestic
jurisdiction of the United States," some of the senators began to look more cautiously at
the whole resolution. Senator Thomas Connally was eager for the U.S. to at least go on
record as accepting some jurisdiction of the World Court. Rather than see the whole issue
defeated he proposed a simple amendment to the Morse resolution. It consisted of six
words: "as determined by the United States." With this amendment, the resolution passed
by a vote of 62 to 2 on August 2, 1946.
As of today, these six words are all that stand between us and complete legal subjection
to the whims of fifteen or nine or five or even two men whose legal backgrounds and
personal ideologies may be strongly antipathetic to the free world in general and to the
United States in particular.
In spite of this, there has been a concerted drive in this country to generate support for the
repeal of the Connally Amendment. The basic stratagem behind this drive has been to
trick Americans into believing that unless we repeal the amendment we are self-judging
our own case. This is then supposed to shame us into being big enough and courageous
enough to openly submit our cases to impartial judgment. This, of course, is an invalid
argument since all we are doing is challenging the jurisdiction of the Court to try these
cases in the first place. This is a common and ancient practice in American law. Just as
we would refuse to submit a murder case to a traffic court, we have a right to refuse to
submit a case involving domestic affairs to an international court. In view of the prevailing
accepted definition of domestic affairs this reservation is more important than ever before.