International Legal Evangelism: Intelligence, Reconnaissance & Missions

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…a Compendium of Works on:
International Legal Evangelism
Intelligence, Reconnaissance & Missions
Evangelism & Intelligence
Matthew 10:7-14
2 Corinthians 5:20 | Ephesians 4:11
2 Timothy 4:5
Reconnaissance & Missions
Joshua 7:2-5
Numbers 13:2,26 | Judges 18:2
Ephesians 6:12
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The Advocacy Foundation, Inc.
Helping Individuals, Organizations & Communities
Achieve Their Full Potential
Since its founding in 2003, The Advocacy Foundation has become recognized as an effective
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having the overall objective of eradicating all forms of youth violence and correcting injustices
everywhere. In carrying-out these initiatives, we have adopted the evidence-based strategic
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Dedication
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We pray that you will bear in mind:
Matthew 19:26 (NIV)
Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible,
but with God all things are possible." (Emphasis added)
To all of us who daily look past our circumstances, and naysayers, to what the Lord says we will
accomplish:
Blessings!!
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The Transformative Justice Project
Eradicating Juvenile Delinquency Requires a Multi-Disciplinary Approach
The way we accomplish all this is a follows:
The Juvenile Justice system is incredibly overloaded, and
Solutions-Based programs are woefully underfunded. Our
precious children, therefore, particularly young people of
color, often get the “swift” version of justice whenever they
come into contact with the law.
Decisions to build prison facilities are often based on
elementary school test results, and our country incarcerates
more of its young than any other nation on earth. So we at
The Foundation labor to pull our young people out of the
“school to prison” pipeline, and we then coordinate the efforts
of the legal, psychological, governmental and educational
professionals needed to bring an end to delinquency.
We also educate families, police, local businesses, elected
officials, clergy, and schools and other stakeholders about
transforming whole communities, and we labor to change
their thinking about the causes of delinquency with the goal
of helping them embrace the idea of restoration for the young
people in our care who demonstrate repentance for their
mistakes.
1. We vigorously advocate for charges reductions, wherever possible, in the adjudicatory (court)
process, with the ultimate goal of expungement or pardon, in order to maximize the chances for
our clients to graduate high school and progress into college, military service or the workforce
without the stigma of a criminal record;
2. We then enroll each young person into an Evidence-Based, Data-Driven Restorative Justice
program designed to facilitate their rehabilitation and subsequent reintegration back into the
community;
3. While those projects are operating, we conduct a wide variety of ComeUnity-ReEngineering
seminars and workshops on topics ranging from Juvenile Justice to Parental Rights, to Domestic
issues to Police friendly contacts, to CBO and FBO accountability and compliance;
4. Throughout the process, we encourage and maintain frequent personal contact between all
parties;
5 Throughout the process we conduct a continuum of events and fundraisers designed to facilitate
collaboration among professionals and community stakeholders; and finally
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6. 1 We disseminate Quarterly publications, like our e-Advocate series Newsletter and our e-Advocate
Quarterly electronic Magazine to all regular donors in order to facilitate a lifelong learning process
on the ever-evolving developments in the Justice system.
And in addition to the help we provide for our young clients and their families, we also facilitate
Community Engagement through the Restorative Justice process, thereby balancing the interesrs
of local businesses, schools, clergy, elected officials, police, and all interested stakeholders. Through
these efforts, relationships are rebuilt & strengthened, local businesses and communities are enhanced &
protected from victimization, young careers are developed, and our precious young people are kept out
of the prison pipeline.
This is a massive undertaking, and we need all the help and financial support you can give! We plan to
help 75 young persons per quarter-year (aggregating to a total of 250 per year) in each jurisdiction we
serve) at an average cost of under $2,500 per client, per year.*
Thank you in advance for your support!
* FYI:
1. The national average cost to taxpayers for minimum-security youth incarceration, is around
$43,000.00 per child, per year.
2. The average annual cost to taxpayers for maximun-security youth incarceration is well over
$148,000.00 per child, per year.
- (US News and World Report, December 9, 2014);
3. In every jurisdiction in the nation, the Plea Bargain rate is above 99%.
The Judicial system engages in a tri-partite balancing task in every single one of these matters, seeking
to balance Rehabilitative Justice with Community Protection and Judicial Economy, and, although
the practitioners work very hard to achieve positive outcomes, the scales are nowhere near balanced
where people of color are involved.
We must reverse this trend, which is right now working very much against the best interests of our young.
Our young people do not belong behind bars.
- Jack Johnson
1
In addition to supporting our world-class programming and support services, all regular donors receive our Quarterly e-Newsletter
(The e-Advocate), as well as The e-Advocate Quarterly Magazine.
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The Advocacy Foundation, Inc.
Helping Individuals, Organizations & Communities
Achieve Their Full Potential
…a collection of works on
International Legal Evangelism
Intelligence, Reconnaissance & Missions
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Biblical Authority
________
Evangelism & Intelligence
Matthew 10:7-14 (NIV)
7
As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 8 Heal the
sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you
have received; freely give. 9 “Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in
your belts— 10 no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is
worth his keep. 11 Whatever town or village you enter, search there for some worthy
person and stay at their house until you leave. 12 As you enter the home, give it your
greeting. 13 If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace
return to you. 14 If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home
or town and shake the dust off your feet.
2 Corinthians 5:20
20
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal
through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
Ephesians 4:11
11
So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and
teachers,
2 Timothy 4:5
5
But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an
evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
________
Reconnaissance & Missions
Joshua 7:2-5
2
Now Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth Aven to the east of
Bethel, and told them, “Go up and spy out the region.” So the men went up and spied
out Ai. 3 When they returned to Joshua, they said, “Not all the army will have to go up
against Ai. Send two or three thousand men to take it and do not weary the whole army,
for only a few people live there.” 4 So about three thousand went up; but they were
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outed by the men of Ai, 5 who killed about thirty-six of them. They chased the Israelites
from the city gate as far as the stone quarries and struck them down on the slopes. At
this the hearts of the people melted in fear and became like water.
Numbers 13:2
2
“Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the
Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.”
Numbers 13:26
Report on the Exploration
26
They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in
the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and
showed them the fruit of the land.
Judges 18:2
2
So the Danites sent five of their leading men from Zorah and Eshtaol to spy out the
land and explore it. These men represented all the Danites. They told them, “Go,
explore the land.” So they entered the hill country of Ephraim and came to the house of
Micah, where they spent the night.
Ephesians 6:12
12
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the
authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil
in the heavenly realms.
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Table of Contents
…a compendium of works on
International Legal Evangelism
Intelligence, Reconnaissance & Missions
Biblical Authority
I. Introduction: International Legal Evangelism……………………. 15
II. Legal Intelligence & Reconnaissance……..……………….…….. 25
III. The A/F Fellowship of International Christian Attorneys………... 39
IV.
Foreign Diplomatic Missions
and Paradiplomacy…….…………………………………… 43
V. The Lawyers’ War Room……………..………………………….... 57
VI. International Paradigm Shifting…………………………………… 63
VII. Evidence-Based Policy Deployment.……………………............ 77
VIII. References……………………………………………………......... 85
______
Attachments
A. Evangelism and Social Justice
B. A Religious View of The Foundations of International Law
C. The Functions of Religion in The International Legal System
Copyright © 2018 The Advocacy Foundation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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I. Introduction
International Legal Evangelism
What Is Evangelism?
Jeremy Bouma on March 22nd, 2018
Evangelism in a Skeptical World (by Sam Chan)
Most Christians know that they should be engaging in the work of evangelism, but few
know what evangelism is.
For example, is the stay-at-home mom who helps run the play group at her church
doing evangelism if she incorporates Bible stories into the craft activities? Can a play
group become an evangelistic play group?
Or does evangelism only occur in more “conventional” tactics: witnessing on the street,
leading large crusades? Are those the only ways the gospel of Jesus Christ can be
communicated, the only way people can evangelize?
In other words: What counts as evangelism? What is evangelism?
This word evangelism carries a lot of baggage, tradition, and emotion. Furthermore,
most people have been poorly equipped with evangelism methods that are no longer
effective in today’s post-Christian world. As a result, many people become frustrated
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with their evangelistic efforts, blame themselves when their evangelism efforts don’t
seem to work, and simply give up communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Sam Chan’s Evangelism in a Skeptical World is a textbook on evangelism that explains
the essence of evangelism and equips Christians with the principles and skills they
need to make the “unbelievable news” about Jesus more believable in a skeptical world.
In this book, Chan offers a robust, biblical response to the important question: What is
evangelism?
The Definition of Evangelism
Many people use the word evangelism in different ways. However, what does the Bible
say about this important word? When we look to Scripture, we run into a problem: there
is no direct-equivalent word for our English word evangelism in the New Testament. Its
origin is rooted in three Greek words:
euangelion—“gospel”—to describe what is said (Mark 1:14–15)
euangelistes—“evangelist”—to describe the person who is telling the gospel
(Acts 21:8; Eph. 4:11)
euangelizo— “to proclaim the gospel”—to describe the activity of telling the
gospel (Rom. 10:15).
Evangelism, then, is the English term for the act of communicating the gospel, an
act conveyed in the New Testament by the verb euangelizo (‘to bring good news’) (14).
“The best way to understand the term evangelism,” Chan explains, “is that it is our
attempt to describe what happens when someone tells the euangelion or gospel, which
is the ‘good news’ about Jesus Christ.” (14) Chan goes on to give a fuller answer to
“What is evangelism”:
The essence of evangelism is the message that Jesus Christ is Lord. Evangelism is our
human effort of proclaiming this message—which necessarily involves using our human
communication, language, idioms, metaphors, stories, experiences, personality,
emotions, context, culture, locatedness—and trusting and praying that God, in his
sovereign will, will supernaturally use our human and natural means to effect his divine
purposes.
In a general sense, evangelism refers to our human efforts of proclaiming this message
to any audience of believers and nonbelievers. In a narrower sense, evangelism refers
to our human efforts of proclaiming this message to nonbelievers. But in both senses,
we proclaim the gospel with the hope that our audience responds by trusting, repenting,
and following and obeying Jesus. (24)
Sometimes we need to rethink and re-define what it means to evangelize. The essence
of evangelism is the gospel, which is the good news of Jesus—not methods or the
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kinds and sizes of audiences. Which means we are free to make this unbelievable*
good news about Jesus more believable in any number of ways: through urging or
encouraging; blessing or warning; and even activities for children such as singing,
puppet shows, and drama.
(*Note: Why does Evangelism in a Skeptical World refer at times to the gospel as
“unbelievable”? Chan writes, “Many people today cannot believe in the gospel because
of ‘defeater beliefs.'” If someone holds a defeater belief, they cannot imagine calling
themselves a Christian—”Not if the Christian God sends people to hell! Not if the
Christian God oppresses women. And certainly not if the Christian God won’t allow gays
to get married.” Chan explains, “Until these [defeater beliefs] are addressed by
Christians, people [who hold these beliefs] will refuse to believe the gospel of Jesus. But
if Christians can hear, understand, empathize with, and address [these] presuppositions,
then the unbelievable news of Jesus might become more believable.” Chan’s book
Evangelism in a Skeptical World will help you achieve these goals.)
Bible Verses about
Evangelism and Its Roles
The Bible has some
important things to say about
various roles in evangelism.
These roles help us better
understand it. Just as in an
orchestra, where there are
different parts to play—from
violinists to trumpeters,
flutists to percussionists—in
the same way, there are
different roles in evangelism.
1 Thessalonians 1:4–10 reveals six crucial parts that persons play in the symphony of
evangelism, which Chan outlines below:
1. God’s role is to choose people for salvation (v.4). God has a sovereign role in
salvation. This is the theological idea of calling, election, and predestination.
2. Jesus’ role is to save people from wrath (v.10). He is responsible for dying for
people and their sins, rising from the dead, and one day coming back to judge
people. Jesus’ other role is that the gospel story is about him (v. 8). The gospel is
a message about who Jesus is and what he’s done to save people from their
sins.
3. Paul’s role is to communicate the gospel (v. 5). He did this both with words
and actions, not just what he said but also how he lived. Paul gives more details
about his model life in 1 Thessalonians 2:6–12.
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4. The Holy Spirit’s role is to empower the person who is communicating the
gospel (v. 5). Perhaps this means that the Spirit gives the person the gift of
effective communication or the words to say. And the Spirit also illuminates the
person hearing the gospel by convicting them (v. 5) and opening their heart to
receive the gospel with joy (v. 6).
5. The Thessalonians hear the gospel and welcome it with joy (v. 6b). They
respond with faith (v. 8b) by turning from their idols to God (vv. 8b–9). Now they
imitate Paul (v. 6a) and are models for other believers (v. 7) while they wait for
Jesus to return (v. 10).
6. The gospel is a message about Jesus (v. 8). It is the means by which the Holy
Spirit convicts people of their sins (v. 5) and enables them to welcome God’s
salvation with joy (v. 6). (20–21)
This chart further describes these evangelism roles by mapping them along six
theological categories:
God Chooses (v.5) Election
Jesus Saves (v. 10) Atonement
Paul (the Evangelist) Brings The Gospel (v.5) External Call
Holy Spirit Power, Suffering, Joy (v.v. 5-6) Internal Call
Thessalonians (Hearers) Faith and Repentance (v.v.8-9) Conversion
Gospel Message Story of Jesus (v.8) Instrument
Like Paul’s role in 1 Thessalonians, “Our role is to communicate the gospel both in
words and actions. But our role is not God’s: we are not sovereignly choosing who gets
saved. Our role is not Jesus’: we are not saving people from their sins. Our role is not
the Holy Spirit’s: we cannot force people to believe. Instead we must stay focused on
our role as the evangelist and do it well.” (21)
Common Approaches to Evangelism
Over the years, several approaches to evangelism have been developed to
communicate the gospel and lead people to salvation—including some less-than-savory
approaches, like pressure evangelism. Chan presents several of the best approaches to
evangelism, including these common ones.
(1) Everyday Evangelism—One of the most common approaches to evangelism
integrates evangelism into our daily lives. “Our usual approach to evangelism is to add
some activity to our lives: maybe I’m going to try to tell someone about Jesus at lunch or
I’m going to join a book club… But we need to change our lives so that we live an
evangelistic lifestyle, not a life with add-on bits of evangelism.” (45)
Through this approach, believers are intentional about going to non-Christians before
they come to us. It pays close attention to and navigates the three concentric circles
of conversation—interests, values, and worldview—being alert to what people are
saying and learning to transition from one layer of the conversation to the next.
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Everyday evangelism also listens to the stories of others, while telling our own story of
spiritual transformation, and looking for opportunities to tell Jesus’ story of good news.
(2) Evangelism Expository Talk—A more formal approach to communicating the
gospel uses an expository Bible message. Examples include an evangelistic Sunday
church service or youth group events, after-dinner talks at a restaurant or coffee shop,
and men’s breakfasts or dinners. Chan describes this approach in this way:
We begin with a Bible passage. Sometimes
you are given a text, and sometimes you get to
choose. Your choice should be guided, in part,
by your audience. What concepts of sin,
salvation, Jesus, and conversion will best suit
the audience, setting, and occasion? What
learning style will the audience prefer—didactic
or narrative?
The next step is to convert the big idea into a
question with an answer… After you have your question, the next step is to convert it
into an existential question. The existential question is the need addressed by this
passage. You may need to reflect on the passage and the question you’ve developed to
work out what existential need is addressed by the big idea. (218, 220)
(3) Apologetics—Another common approach to communicating the good news of
Jesus Christ is through the use of facts and evidence, arguments and logic—also
known as apologetics, an approach that seeks to get people to change their views. “So
how can we get people to change their views?” Chan asks. “Do people believe what
they believe because of evidence? Or because of presuppositions? This is the chickenand-egg
argument that divides the Christian world in the field of apologetics,” which
includes two dominant approaches: evidentialism and pre-suppositionalism.” (252)
Evidentialism believes that if we give people evidence for what we believe, the
evidence will compel them to belief. “Those who take a more evidentialist
approach believe in the importance of using reason, arguments, logic, facts,
evidence, and data in evangelism.” (252)
Pre-suppositionalists simply assume Christian presuppositions and start from
there by presenting the gospel and praying for the Spirit to do his work. “A presuppositionalist
will tend to be pessimistic about the enterprise of apologetics,
believing that there is little place for using reason, arguments, logic, facts,
evidence, and data in evangelism.” (253)
Chan uses a modified pre-suppositionalist approach: “I frequently use reasoning and
arguments and evidence to dismantle a nonbeliever’s presuppositions. Once we’ve
established some common ground, I can present the Christian worldview as an
attractive alternative to their faulty worldview.” (254–255)
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Chan’s book will help you grow your skills and confidence in these three types of
evangelism.
The Relationship of Evangelism to Missionary Work
Missionaries have understood something important about the work of evangelism that
lay leaders have begun to realize in the last several years: evangelism must connect the
gospel to culture. Chan explains the relationship between gospel and culture in two
ways.
First, “The gospel is transcultural because it is true for all cultures. In the Old
Testament, God is the God of both Israel and the nations. In the New Testament,
salvation is for both the Jews and the gentiles… The gospel is universal and normative
for all peoples at all times and in all places.” (132) And yet, secondly, ”the gospel is not
acultural, as if it hovers above culture and is devoid of any culture. Instead, the gospel is
deeply enculturated,” which is why “we have to explain the Bible’s culture whenever we
give a story or talk from the Bible.” (132, 133)
There’s another aspect to the gospel-culture relationship: “The person we are trying to
evangelize is also enculturated. They are not a person who hovers above culture and is
devoid of any cultural influences. Instead, this person is deeply enculturated. And this
can vary widely, even within the same geographical area.…Each would have different
cultural concerns, gospel interpretation, cultural communication, and cultural
application.” (133)
Not only are the evangelized enculturated—so are evangelists. “We ourselves as
evangelists … are not free-floating people hovering above the culture, devoid of any
culture. We are not acultural. We each have a cultural accent and a cultural flavor. We
are deeply enculturated, and this will affect our understanding and application of the
gospel.” (135)
Like missionaries who evangelize tribes in Papua New Guinea or the streets of Mumbai,
when we engage in evangelism we need to understand “There is no form for presenting
the gospel that hovers above a culture, devoid of culture. We have to pick a particular
form that speaks to one culture, but may not be able to speak to another culture.” (138)
This doesn’t mean the gospel itself changes, only the way we communicate it to various
kinds of people.
Are all Christians Evangelists?
After his resurrection and before his ascension, Jesus said to his disciples, “As the
Father has sent me, I am sending you” (Jn. 20:21). But does this apply to all Christians
or just certain ones, like the disciples? Are all Christians evangelists?
As we have seen, “the essence of evangelism is its message, the gospel of Jesus
Christ. Evangelism is defined by its message, not by its method, medium, or audience.”
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(37) Since evangelism has nothing to do with the kind of Christian—professional pastor
or evangelist, lay Christian or leader—but with the content of the message—the gospel
of Jesus Christ—all Christians are evangelists, called and sent by Jesus to make his
unbelievable news more believable.
This will look different for different Christians. As Chan explains, “there are different
models of evangelism in the Bible: sometimes it’s a logical presentation of ideas,
sometimes it’s an event with emotional impact, and sometimes it’s through stories.”
Furthermore, different people experience God’s regenerating work in different ways.
And because “people will be persuaded in different ways—through logic, experiences,
or personal examples” (38)—this leaves the door open for Christians to use different
methods to evangelize.
“So the challenge for us when we evangelize is to be open to different methods,
mediums, and entry points. We don’t have to evangelize the same way that we were
evangelized. And we don’t have to impose our learning styles on other people.” (38) We
do, however, need to take seriously our calling as evangelists.
“God uses our gospel presentations as natural means for his supernatural regenerating
work. This keeps us humble about our abilities. But it also encourages us to keep doing
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the work of an evangelist, because if God so wills it, he will use our words to move
someone from death to life.”
________
Evangelism in Leadership:
Is It Really as Simple as 5 Simple Steps?
We cannot lead what we do not live.
Dr. Rick Richardson | June 2, 2017
Pastors today are facing several challenges that make it tough to lead their churches
into evangelism. With a trend towards tolerance, evangelism and ‘trying to convert’
others is often a major turn off in broader American and Western culture. Within the
Church, compassion and justice ministries have become more affirmed and applauded,
and so it’s often easier to focus our outreach efforts in those areas.
Additionally, many younger evangelicals don't necessarily want to identify as
evangelical and would rather focus on the inclusion of others than on the message that
rejecting Jesus leads to exclusion from the presence of God.
With these cultural odds stacked against us, how do we keep ourselves from becoming
defeated in sharing our faith? More than that, how do we become effective in leading
others in the area of evangelism? Here are five simple steps that will help us lead our
churches into fulfilling the call to make disciples.
Commit to Being A Witness, Even If You’re Not An Evangelist
The truth is that not everyone is an evangelist. In fact, many pastors are not gifted in
evangelism, but that doesn’t mean we don’t tell others about what God has done for us
through Jesus. Although Jesus gives His disciples different spiritual gifts, He
commissions all of us to be His witnesses and testify to what He has done (Acts 1:8,
Matthew 4:19, John 20:21).
Later in scripture, Paul exhorts Timothy to do the work of an evangelist, even though
that probably wasn’t his primary gifting (2 Timothy 4:5). In order to shift the tide of
evangelism in our churches, we must first take greater ownership of it ourselves.
Model Personal Evangelism That Your People Can Imitate
Too many pastors have limited their outreach to only include those who walk through
the church doors, brought by the people in their church. Pastors have often stopped
reaching out in their own everyday lives. There may be many legitimate reasons for this,
but if we want to see our churches become vibrant in evangelism, we begin by modeling
outreach that our people can imitate!
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This means that we need to set an example of reaching out to others wherever we run
into them – whether in our neighborhood, at the local Starbucks, through the activities of
our kids, or through our own personal hobbies. As church leaders, if we are not
missional in our everyday lives, our people will not be missional either. We cannot lead
what we are not living.
Expect Unchurched People to Attend Your Ministries
Whether we’re aware of it or not, we prepare for and structure our services and
ministries based on who we expect to attend. If we don’t expect unchurched people to
be there, we may find ourselves using insider language that would likely be confusing
for a first-time guest. It’s essential to anticipate unchurched people in our congregations
and to make sure we translate the insider language so that unchurched people can
understand and relate.
Granted, expecting unchurched people to show up at our events and ministries and
then preparing for them is not always easy. It will require us to invest more time and
energy into preparation; however, it will go a long way toward motivating our people to
invite unchurched people, as well as making visitors feel welcomed. It will also
powerfully demonstrate the love of God, who goes out of His way to communicate to us
in ways that we can understand.
I am not saying our worship service ought to be focused on unchurched people. I am
saying that our worship service ought to be as hospitable for unchurched people as we
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can possibly make it. After all, the worship service is still the most likely place
unchurched people will first connect to our congregation.
Integrate An Evangelistic Edge Into Everything You Lead
No matter what ministry you lead, it is possible to cultivate an evangelistic edge – and it
is critical that you do so! For example, if you provide meals for your people who are sick
or grieving, a natural way to incorporate outreach would be to begin providing that care
to the unchurched people in your networks and neighborhoods as well.
If you greet friends at church, be intentional about greeting strangers and new people
with equal warmth. If you teach your people to budget, save, and give, take the time to
teach the unchurched to budget, save, and give as well. As we expand our circle of
concern to include unchurched individuals, we will begin to draw people not only into
our church communities, but also into the family of God.
Seek Out Accountability!
As Bill Hybels likes to say, “Vision leaks.” We have found, “Evangelism evaporates!” If
we don't have people in our lives with whom we share our outreach stories and
struggles, mission drift will inevitably set in. It honestly doesn’t take long for evangelism
to slip off our list of priorities, so we all need people to cheer us on and help us move
past our own evangelism-related barriers.
Accountability is the deal-maker when it comes to evangelism. Without it, our best
intentions and efforts will eventually fizzle out. But with it, we will begin to see
evangelism effectively integrated into every aspect of our lives.
The world longs to see genuine care and servanthood extended not just to our own
fellow believers, but to all! In the midst of a cultural climate that seems dead-set against
evangelism, we have an incredible opportunity to lead our congregations into effective
and vibrant love for God and people that draws the unchurched toward Jesus.
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II. Legal Intelligence
& Reconnaissance
Intelligence
Military Intelligence is a military discipline that uses information collection and analysis
approaches to provide guidance and direction to assist commanders in their decisions.
This aim is achieved by providing an assessment of data from a range of sources,
directed towards the commanders' mission requirements or responding to questions as
part of operational or campaign planning. To provide an analysis, the commander's
information requirements are first identified, which are then incorporated into
intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination.
Areas of study may include the operational environment, hostile, friendly and neutral
forces, the civilian population in an area of combat operations, and other broader areas
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of interest. Intelligence activities are conducted at all levels, from tactical to strategic, in
peacetime, the period of transition to war, and during a war itself.
Most governments maintain a military intelligence capability to provide analytical and
information collection personnel in both specialist units and from other arms and
services. The military and civilian intelligence capabilities collaborate to inform the
spectrum of political and military activities.
Personnel performing intelligence duties may be selected for their analytical abilities
and personal intelligence before receiving formal training.
Strategic Intelligence
Levels of Intelligence
Strategic intelligence is concerned with broad issues such as economics, political
assessments, military capabilities and intentions of foreign nations (and, increasingly,
non-state actors). Such intelligence may be scientific, technical, tactical, diplomatic or
sociological, but these changes are analyzed in combination with known facts about the
area in question, such as geography, demographics and industrial capacities.
Operational Intelligence
Operational intelligence is focused on support or denial of intelligence at operational
tiers. Operational tier is below strategic level of leadership and refers to the design of
practical manifestation.
Tactical Intelligence
Tactical intelligence is focused on support to operations at the tactical level and would
be attached to the battlegroup. At the tactical level, briefings are delivered to patrols on
current threats and collection priorities. These patrols are then debriefed to elicit
information for analysis and communication through the reporting chain.
Intelligence Tasking
Intelligence should respond to the needs of leadership, based on the military objective
and operational plans. The military objective provides a focus for the estimate process,
from which a number of information requirements are derived. Information requirements
may be related to terrain and impact on vehicle or personnel movement, disposition of
hostile forces, sentiments of the local population and capabilities of the hostile order of
battle.
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In response to the information requirements, analysts examine existing information,
identifying gaps in the available knowledge. Where gaps in knowledge exist, the staff
may be able to task collection assets to target the requirement.
Analysis reports draw on all available sources of information, whether drawn from
existing material or collected in response to the requirement. The analysis reports are
used to inform the remaining planning staff, influencing planning and seeking to predict
adversary intent.
This process is described as Collection Co-ordination and Intelligence Requirement
Management (CCIRM).
The Intelligence Process
The process of intelligence has four phases: collection, analysis, processing and
dissemination.
In the United Kingdom these are known as direction, collection, processing and
dissemination.
In the U.S. military, Joint Publication 2-0 (JP 2-0) states: "The six categories of
intelligence operations are: planning and direction; collection; processing and
exploitation; analysis and production; dissemination and integration; and evaluation and
feedback."
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Collection
Many of the most important facts are well known or may be gathered from public
sources. This form of information collection is known as open-source intelligence. For
example, the population, ethnic make-up and main industries of a region are extremely
important to military commanders, and this information is usually public. It is however
imperative that the collector of information understands that what is collected is
"information", and does not become intelligence until after an analyst has evaluated and
verified this information. Collection of read materials, composition of units or elements,
disposition of strength, training, tactics, personalities (leaders) of these units and
elements contribute to the overall intelligence value after careful analysis.
The tonnage and basic weaponry of most capital ships and aircraft are also public, and
their speeds and ranges can often be reasonably estimated by experts, often just from
photographs. Ordinary facts like the lunar phase on particular days or the ballistic range
of common military weapons are also very valuable to planning, and are habitually
collected in an intelligence library.
A great deal of useful intelligence can be gathered from photointerpretation of detailed
high-altitude pictures of a country. Photointerpreters generally maintain catalogs of
munitions factories, military bases and crate designs in order to interpret munition
shipments and inventories.
Most intelligence services maintain or support groups whose only purpose is to keep
maps. Since maps also have valuable civilian uses, these agencies are often publicly
associated or identified as other parts of the government. Some historic counterintelligence
services, especially in Russia and China, have intentionally banned or
placed disinformation in public maps; good intelligence can identify this disinformation.
It is commonplace for the intelligence services of large countries to read every
published journal of the nations in which it is interested, and the main newspapers and
journals of every nation. This is a basic source of intelligence.
It is also common for diplomatic and journalistic personnel to have a secondary goal of
collecting military intelligence. For western democracies, it is extremely rare for
journalists to be paid by an official intelligence service, but they may still patriotically
pass on tidbits of information they gather as they carry on their legitimate business.
Also, much public information in a nation may be unavailable from outside the country.
This is why most intelligence services attach members to foreign service offices.
Some industrialized nations also eavesdrop continuously on the entire radio spectrum,
interpreting it in real time. This includes not only broadcasts of national and local radio
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and television, but also local military traffic, radar emissions and even microwaved
telephone and telegraph traffic, including satellite traffic.
The U.S. in particular is known to maintain satellites that can intercept cell-phone and
pager traffic, usually referred to as the ECHELON system. Analysis of bulk traffic is
normally performed by complex computer programs that parse natural language and
phone numbers looking for threatening conversations and correspondents. In some
extraordinary cases, undersea or land-based cables have been tapped as well.
More exotic secret information, such as encryption keys, diplomatic message traffic,
policy and orders of battle are usually restricted to analysts on a need-to-know basis in
order to protect the sources and methods from foreign traffic analysis.
Analysis
Analysis consists of assessment of an adversary's capabilities and vulnerabilities. In a
real sense, these are threats and opportunities. Analysts generally look for the least
defended or most fragile resource that is necessary for important military capabilities.
These are then flagged as critical vulnerabilities. For example, in modern mechanized
warfare, the logistic train for a military unit's fuel supply is often the most vulnerable part
of a nation's order of battle.
Human intelligence, gathered by spies, is usually carefully tested against unrelated
sources. It is notoriously prone to inaccuracy. In some cases, sources will just make up
imaginative stories for pay, or they may try to settle grudges by identifying personal
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enemies as enemies of the state that is paying for the intelligence. However, human
intelligence is often the only form of intelligence that provides information about an
opponent's intentions and rationales, and it is therefore often uniquely valuable to
successful negotiation of diplomatic solutions.
In some intelligence organizations, analysis follows a procedure. First, general media
and sources are screened to locate items or groups of interest, and then their location,
capabilities, inputs and environment are systematically assessed for vulnerabilities
using a continuously-updated list of typical vulnerabilities.
Processing
Critical vulnerabilities are then indexed in a way that makes them easily available to
advisors and line intelligence personnel who package this information for policy-makers
and war-fighters. Vulnerabilities are usually indexed by the nation and military unit with
a list of possible attack methods.
Critical threats are usually maintained in a prioritized file, with important enemy
capabilities analyzed on a schedule set by an estimate of the enemy's preparation time.
For example, nuclear threats between the USSR and the U.S. were analyzed in real
time by continuously on-duty staffs.
In contrast, analysis of tank or army deployments are usually triggered by
accumulations of fuel and munitions, which are monitored every few days. In some
cases, automated analysis is performed in real time on automated data traffic.
Packaging threats and vulnerabilities for decision-makers is a crucial part of military
intelligence. A good intelligence officer will stay very close to the policy-maker or war
fighter to anticipate their information requirements and tailor the information needed. A
good intelligence officer will also ask a fairly large number of questions in order to help
anticipate needs. For an important policy-maker, the intelligence officer will have a staff
to which research projects can be assigned.
Developing a plan of attack is not the responsibility of intelligence, though it helps an
analyst to know the capabilities of common types of military units. Generally, policymakers
are presented with a list of threats and opportunities.
They approve some basic action, and then professional military personnel plan the
detailed act and carry it out. Once hostilities begin, target selection often moves into the
upper end of the military chain of command. Once ready stocks of weapons and fuel are
depleted, logistic concerns are often exported to civilian policy-makers.
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Dissemination
The processed intelligence information is disseminated through database systems, intel
bulletins and briefings to the different decision-makers. The bulletins may also include
consequently resulting information requirements and thus conclude the intelligence
cycle.
________
Reconnaissance
In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration outside an area
occupied by friendly forces to gain information about natural features and other activities
in the area.
Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmishers, Long Range
Reconnaissance Patrol, U.S. Army Rangers, cavalry scouts, or military intelligence
specialists), ships or submarines, manned/unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, satellites,
or by setting up covert observation posts.
Espionage normally is not reconnaissance, because reconnaissance is a military's
special forces operating ahead of its main forces; spies are non-combatants operating
behind enemy lines.
Often called "recce" (British, Canadian and Australian English) or "recon" (American
English), the associated verb is reconnoitre.
History
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Traditionally, reconnaissance was a role that was adopted by the cavalry. Speed was
key in these maneuvers, thus infantry was ill-suited to the task. From horses to vehicles,
for warriors throughout history, commanders procured their ability to have speed and
mobility, to mount and dismount, during maneuver warfare. Military commanders
favored specialized small units for speed and mobility, to gain valuable information
about the terrain and enemy before sending the main (or majority) troops into the area,
screening, covering force, pursuit and exploitation roles. Skirmishing is a traditional skill
of reconnaissance, as well as harassment of the enemy.
Overview
Reconnaissance conducted by ground forces includes special reconnaissance, armored
reconnaissance, amphibious reconnaissance and civil reconnaissance.
Aerial reconnaissance is reconnaissance carried out by aircraft (of all types including
balloons and unmanned aircraft). The purpose is to survey weather conditions, map
terrain, and may include military purposes such as observing tangible structures,
particular areas, and movement of enemy forces.
Naval forces use aerial and satellite reconnaissance to observe enemy forces. Navies
also undertake hydrographic surveys and intelligence gathering.
Reconnaissance satellites provide military commanders with photographs of enemy
forces and other intelligence. Military forces also use geographical and meteorological
information from Earth observation satellites.
Psychology
A tracker needs to pay close attention to both the environment and the psychology of
his enemy. Knowledge of human psychology, sociology, and cultural backgrounds is
necessary to know the actions of the enemy and where the enemy is heading. The
celebrated Chief of Scouts Frederick Russell Burnham had this to say:
It is imperative that a scout should know the history, tradition, religion, social customs,
and superstitions of whatever country or people he is called on to work in or among.
This is almost as necessary as to know the physical character of the country, its climate
and products.
Certain people will do certain things almost without fail. Certain other things, perfectly
feasible, they will not do. There is no danger of knowing too much of the mental habits
of an enemy. One should neither underestimate the enemy nor credit him with
superhuman powers. Fear and courage are latent in every human being, though roused
into activity by very diverse means.
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Discipline
Types of Reconnaissance:
Terrain-oriented reconnaissance is a survey of the terrain (its features, weather,
and other natural observations).
Force-oriented reconnaissance focuses on the enemy forces (number,
equipment, activities, disposition etc.) and may include target acquisition.
Civil-oriented reconnaissance focuses on the civil dimension of the battlespace
(areas, structures, capabilities, organizations, people and events abbreviated
ASCOPE).
The techniques and objectives are not mutually exclusive; it is up to the commander
whether they are carried out separately or by the same unit.
Reconnaissance-In-Force
Units tasked with reconnaissance are armed only for self-defense, and rely on stealth to
gather information. Others are well-enough armed to also deny information to the
enemy by destroying their reconnaissance elements.
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Reconnaissance-in-force (RIF) is a type of military operation or military tactics used
specifically to probe an enemy's disposition. By mounting an offensive with considerable
(but not decisive) force, the commander hopes to elicit a strong reaction by the enemy
that reveals its own strength, deployment, and other tactical data. The RIF commander
retains the option to fall back with the data or expand the conflict into a full engagement.
Other methods consist of hit-and-run tactics using rapid mobility, and in some cases
light-armored vehicles for added fire superiority, as the need arises.
Reconnaissance-By-Fire
Reconnaissance by fire (or speculative fire) is the act of firing at likely enemy positions,
in order to cause the enemy force to reveal their location by moving or by returning fire.
Reconnaissance-Pull
Reconnaissance-pull is a tactic that is applied at the regiment to division level and
defined as locating and rapidly exploiting enemy weaknesses. It is the ability to
determine enemy positions and create exploitable gaps through which friendly forces
can pass while avoiding obstacles and strong points.
A textbook example of reconnaissance-pull was documented during the Tinian landings
of World War II, utilized by the United States Marine Corps's Amphibious
Reconnaissance Battalion, from V Amphibious Corps. Aerial photography and the
confirmation by the amphibious reconnaissance platoons determined that the Japanese
defenders had largely ignored the northern beaches of the island, focusing most of their
defensive effort on beaches in the south-west which were more favorable for an
amphibious landing. American forces quickly changed their landing location to the
northern beaches and planned a small and hasty "deception" operation off the southern
beach, which resulted in a complete surprise for the Japanese forces. As a result,
American forces were able to fight the Japanese force on land, where they had the
advantage, leading to light losses and a relatively short battle that lasted only 9 days.
Types
When referring to reconnaissance, a commander's full intention is to have a vivid picture
of his battlespace. The commander organizes the reconnaissance platoon based on:
1. mission,
2. enemy,
3. terrain,
4. troops and support available,
5. time available, and
6. civil considerations.
This analysis determines whether the platoon uses single or multiple elements to
conduct the reconnaissance, whether it pertains to area, zone, or route
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econnaissance, the following techniques may be used as long as the fundamentals of
reconnaissance are applied.
Scouts may also have different tasks to perform for their commanders of higher
echelons, for example: the engineer reconnaissance detachments will try to identify
difficult terrain in the path of their formation, and attempt to reduce the time it takes to
transit the terrain using specialist engineering equipment such as a pontoon bridge for
crossing water obstacles. Sanitary epidemiological reconnaissance implies collection
and transfer of all data available on sanitary and epidemiological situation of the area of
possible deployment and action of armed forces, the same data for the neighboring and
enemy armed forces. The aim for the reconnaissance is to clear up the reasons of the
specific disease origin- sources of the infection in various extreme situations, including
local wars and armed conflicts, the ways of the infection transfer and all factors
promoting to the infestation.
After the armed forces have become stationary during wartime and emergency of peace
time the sanitary epidemiological reconnaissance turns into sanitary and
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epidemiological surveillance and medical control of vital and communal activity of the
armed forces.
Area
Area reconnaissance refers to the observation, and information obtained, about a
specified location and the area around it; it may be terrain-oriented and/or forceoriented.
Ideally, a reconnaissance platoon, or team, would use surveillance or vantage
(static) points around the objective to observe, and the surrounding area. This
methodology focuses mainly prior to moving forces into or near a specified area; the
military commander may utilize his reconnaissance assets to conduct an area
reconnaissance to avoid being surprised by unsuitable terrain conditions, or most
importantly, unexpected enemy forces. The area could be a town, ridge-line, woods, or
another feature that friendly forces intend to occupy, pass through, or avoid.
Within an area of operation (AO), area reconnaissance can focus the reconnaissance
on the specific area that is critical to the commander. This technique of focusing the
reconnaissance also permits the mission to be accomplished more quickly. Area
reconnaissance can thus be a stand-alone mission or a task to a section or the platoon.
The commander analyzes the mission to determine whether the platoon will conduct
these types of reconnaissance separately or in conjunction with each other.
Civil
Civil reconnaissance is the process of gathering a broad spectrum of civil information
about a specific population in support of military operations. It is related to and often
performed in conjunction with infrastructure reconnaissance (assessment and survey).
Normally the focus of collection in the operational area for civil reconnaissance is
collecting civil information relating to the daily interaction between civilians and military
forces. Civil information encompasses relational, temporal, geospatial and behavioral
information captured in a socio-cultural backdrop. It is information developed from data
related to civil areas, structures, capabilities, organizations, people, and events, within
the civil component of the commander’s operational environment that can be processed
to increase situational awareness and understanding. The type of civil information that
is needed in order to support military operations varies based on the environment and
situation.
Route
U.S. Seabee Engineer Reconnaissance Team on a mission to determine if a bridge can
be used to support troop and convoy movements
Route reconnaissance is oriented on a given route: e.g. a road, a railway, a waterway; a
narrow axis or a general direction of attack, to provide information on route conditions or
activities along the route. A military commander relies on information about locations
along his determined route: which those that would provide best cover and
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concealment; bridge by construction type, dimensions, and classification; or for landing
zones or pickup zones, if the need arises.
In many cases, the commander may act upon a force-oriented route reconnaissance by
which the enemy could influence movement along that route. For the reconnaissance
platoons, or squads, stealth and speed—in conjunction with detailed intelligencereporting—are
most important and crucial. The reconnaissance platoon must remain far
enough ahead of the maneuver force to assist in early warning and to prevent the force
from becoming surprised.
Even it is paramount to obtain information about the available space in which a force
can maneuver without being forced to bunch up due to obstacles. Terrain-oriented route
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econnaissance allows the commander to obtain information and capabilities about the
adjacent terrain for maneuvering his forces, to include, any obstacles (minefields,
barriers, steep ravines, marshy areas, or chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear
contamination) that may obstruct vehicle movement—on routes to, and in, his assigned
area of operations. This requirement includes the size of trees and the density of forests
due to their effects on vehicle movement. Route reconnaissance also allows the
observation for fields of fire along the route and adjacent terrain. This information
assists planners as a supplement to map information.
Zone
Zone reconnaissance focuses on obtaining detailed information before maneuvering
their forces through particular, designated locations. It can be terrain-oriented, forceoriented,
or both, as it acquire this information by reconnoitering within—and by
maintaining surveillance over—routes, obstacles (to include nuclear-radiological,
biological, and chemical contamination), and resources within an assigned location.
Also, force-oriented zone reconnaissance is assigned to gain detailed information about
enemy forces within the zone, or when the enemy situation is vague by which the
information concerning cross-country traffic-ability is desired. The reconnaissance
provides the commander with a detailed picture of how the enemy has occupied the
zone, enabling him to choose the appropriate course-of-action.
As the platoon conducts this type of zone reconnaissance, its emphasis is on
determining the enemy's locations, strengths, and weaknesses. This is the most
thorough and complete reconnaissance mission and therefore is very time-intensive.
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III. The Fellowship of International
Christian Attorneys
The Lawyers Without Borders Model
Some of the areas where LWOB projects are ongoing or in development include the
following regions: Ghana, Liberia, Tanzania, Namibia, Kenya, Uganda, Belize, Jamaica,
Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Nepal, and Indonesia.
LWOB work typically falls into the following
categories: Trial Advocacy Training,
Mediation Training, Neutral Trial
Observation,
Community
Outreach, Civic Education and
Research,
Technical
Assistance,
Policy
Guidance and Justice Sector
(Judges,
Prosecutors,
Public
Defenders)
Capacity
Building
Support.
Themes of our work include:
Gender-based and domestic violence,
Corruption, Human trafficking, Terrorism,
Wildlife Crime, Economic
empowerment to drive
access to justice and sustainable programming,
Electoral violence, Civic and electoral rights, Conflict
mitigation, Mediation, negotiation and consensus building, Rights of the child (labor),
Succession and inheritance rights, Tax Compliance and Land title.
LWOB outputs or deliverables usually involve substantial pro bono collaboration and
have included: 3- 10 day Trial Advocacy Training modules for Judges, prosecutors, law
enforcement officers, trainers and lawyers, Justice Sector Symposia, Legislative
workshops, Roadmaps, Illustrated civic education materials, Training manuals, Digitized
educational visuals, Self-contained or Self-taught eLearning Programs, Awareness
materials and public service campaigns, Educational games, Assessment and
evaluation reports, Monitoring reports, Case Digests and analysis, Bench Books, law
enforcement toolkits and Trial observation reports.
Course and published materials are first created in English and subsequently translated
into one or more local languages. In the past translations have included some of the
following: Swahili, Amharic, Creole, Nepali, French, and Spanish. Lawyers working on
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these projects come from all disciplines, a diverse array of practice sectors and from law
firms, public interest organizations, universities and the private practice.
Unlike many other organizations working with pro bono components, the LWOB model
is not a linking, matching agency or clearinghouse. LWOB designs and manages project
collaboratives working side-by-side with lawyers and law firms. Law firm collaborations
launch with detailed Task Descriptions or Terms of Reference). LWOB’s own in-house
lawyers, provide personal program oversight and management from start to finish. Our
in-house teams stand at the ready to complete any task that our law firm partners, for
any reason, may not be able to complete or deliver on time. The tasking of work for pro
bono lawyers is tailored to ensure that the demands of their practice do not compromise
their pro bono work and vice versa. LWOB has determined that the key is to integrate
and configure the pro bono elements in a way that will not risk program delivery or
program quality. This ensures program stability and addresses any concerns some may
have about programs that utilize substantial pro bono cost-share components.
Ultimately, LWOB designs its projects with mechanisms to ensure it can deliver the
product completely and on time. LWOB selects its partners carefully, ensuring that they
are all mindful of the seriousness of the LWOB commitments to project funders, project
budgets, deliverables, and timetables. LWOB collaborative partners treat LWOB and its
projects with the same level of attention and commitment that they apply to their feepaying
clients.
LWOB develops the programming typically supported by grants that cover the hard
costs of producing the pro bono work product or deliverable. We commit to our pro bono
partners that their work “will never end up in a file drawer.” Where 3rd party financial
underwriting is not available, LWOB will often tap into an array of in-kind supporters to
self-fund and implement worthwhile programs. The ongoing Liberia Digest Project (now
10 years old) is one such project that launched with 3rd party funding in 2008, but
continues now with generous pro bono and in-kind support from Linklaters and
Thomson Reuters.
While our work is apolitical and neutrally oriented, security issues that have arisen
around the world prevent us from disclosing the location and timetables of our work in
real time. We hope you will appreciate that our effort to keep our volunteers safe and
out of harm’s way is paramount and essential to the long-term sustainability of our pro
bono model.
Africa
LWOB programming and capacity building efforts (includes trial observation) and
collaborations in Africa have included the following: Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda,
Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra
Leone and Namibia. LWOB is actively engaged in programming in one or more of those
regions at any given time.
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Latin America/ Caribbean
LWOB continues its work in the Caribbean which first launched in 2007. Our early work
there is focused on conflict resolution, capacity building and international and national
human rights. Work is expected to continue through 2018 in the region focused on
legislative capacity building and the enforcement of national obligations under
international covenants, agreements, conventions and agreements with human rights
and child labor laws. Our work in the coming year will include programming in Jamaica,
Belize and possibly Costa Rica.
Asia
LWOB continues its work on child labor law capacity building in Nepal and programming
is in development for human trafficking work in a multi-country initiative in Asia under a
long-term collaboration over the next four years.
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IV. Foreign Diplomatic Missions
and Paradiplomacy
A Diplomatic Mission or Foreign Mission is a group of people from one
state or an organization present in another state to represent the sending
state/organization officially in the receiving state. In practice, a diplomatic mission
usually denotes the resident mission, namely the embassy, which is the main office of a
country's diplomatic representatives to another country, usually but not necessarily the
receiving state's capital city. Consulates, on the other hand, are smaller diplomatic
missions which are normally located outside the capital of the receiving state (but can
be located in the capital, usually when the sending country has no embassy in the
receiving state). As well as being a diplomatic mission to the country in which it is
situated, it may also be a non-resident permanent mission to one or more other
countries. There are thus resident and non-resident embassies.
Naming
A permanent diplomatic mission is typically known as an embassy, and the head of the
mission is known as an ambassador or high commissioner. The term "embassy" is
commonly used also as a section of a building in which the work of the diplomatic
mission is carried out, but, strictly speaking, it is the diplomatic delegation itself that is
the embassy, while the office space and the diplomatic work done is called the
chancery. Therefore, the embassy operates in the chancery.
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The members of a diplomatic mission can reside within or outside the building that holds
the mission's chancery, and their private residences enjoy the same rights as the
premises of the mission as regards inviolability and protection.
All missions to the United Nations are known simply as permanent missions, while EU
member states' missions to the European Union are known as permanent
representations, and the head of such a mission is typically both a permanent
representative and an ambassador. European Union missions abroad are known as EU
delegations. Some countries have more particular naming for their missions and staff: a
Vatican mission is headed by a nuncio (Latin for "envoy") and consequently known as
an apostolic nunciature. Under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi, Libya's missions used the
name "people's bureau", headed by a secretary.
Missions between Commonwealth countries are known as high commissions, and their
heads are high commissioners. Generally speaking, ambassadors and high
commissioners are regarded as equivalent in status and function and embassies and
high commissions are both deemed to be diplomatic missions.
In the past a diplomatic mission headed by a lower-ranking official (an envoy or minister
resident) was known as a legation. Since the ranks of envoy and minister resident are
effectively obsolete, the designation of legation is no longer used today. (See diplomatic
rank.)
A consulate is similar to, but not the same as a diplomatic office, but with focus on
dealing with individual persons and businesses, as defined by the Vienna Convention
on Consular Relations. A consulate or consulate general is generally a representative of
the embassy in locales outside of the capital city. For instance, the United Kingdom has
its Embassy of the United Kingdom in Washington, D.C., but also maintains seven
consulates-general and four consulates elsewhere in the US. The person in charge of a
consulate or consulate-general is known as a consul or consul-general, respectively.
Similar services may also be provided at the embassy (to serve the region of the
capital) in what is normally called a consular section.
In cases of dispute, it is common for a country to recall its head of mission as a sign of
its displeasure. This is less drastic than cutting diplomatic relations completely, and the
mission will still continue operating more or less normally, but it will now be headed by a
chargé d'affaires (usually the deputy chief of mission) who may have limited powers. A
chargé d'affaires ad interim also heads the mission during the interim between the end
of one chief of mission's term and the beginning of another.
Extraterritoriality
Contrary to popular belief, most diplomatic missions do not enjoy full extraterritorial
status and – in those cases – are not sovereign territory of the represented state.
Rather, the premises of diplomatic missions usually remain under the jurisdiction of the
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host state while being afforded special privileges (such as immunity from most local
laws) by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Diplomats themselves still
retain full diplomatic immunity, and (as an adherent to the Vienna Convention) the host
country may not enter the premises of the mission without permission of the
represented country, even to put out a fire. International rules designate an attack on an
embassy as an attack on the country it represents. The term "extraterritoriality" is often
applied to diplomatic missions, but normally only in this broader sense.
As the host country may not enter the representing country's embassy without
permission, embassies are sometimes used by refugees escaping from either the host
country or a third country. For example, North Korean nationals, who would be arrested
and deported from China upon discovery, have sought sanctuary at various thirdcountry
embassies in China. Once inside the embassy, diplomatic channels can be
used to solve the issue and send the refugees to another country. See the list of people
who took refuge in a diplomatic mission for a list of some notable cases.
Notable violations of embassy extraterritoriality include repeated invasions of the British
Embassy, Beijing (1967), the Iran hostage crisis (1979–1981), and the Japanese
embassy hostage crisis at the ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru (1996-1997).
Role
The Vienna Convention states:
The functions of a diplomatic mission consist, inter alia, in representing the sending State in the receiving
State; protecting in the receiving State the interests of the sending State and of its nationals, within the
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limits permitted by international law; negotiating with the Government of the receiving State; ascertaining
by all lawful means conditions and developments in the receiving State, and reporting thereon to the
Government of the sending State; promoting friendly relations between the sending State and the
receiving State, and developing their economic, cultural and scientific relations.
Diplomatic missions between members of the British Commonwealth of Nations are not
called embassies, but high commissions, as Commonwealth nations share a special
diplomatic relationship. It is generally expected that an embassy of a Commonwealth
country in a non-Commonwealth country will do its best to provide diplomatic services to
citizens from other Commonwealth countries if the citizen's country does not have an
embassy in that country. Canadian and Australian nationals enjoy even greater
cooperation between their respective consular services, as outlined in Canada-Australia
Consular Services Sharing Agreement. The same kind of procedure is also followed
multilaterally by the member states of the European Union (EU). European citizens in
need of consular help in a country without diplomatic or consular representation of their
own country may turn to any consular or diplomatic mission of another EU member
state.
The rights and immunities (such as diplomatic immunity) of diplomatic missions are
codified in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
Multiple Missions In a City
Some cities may host more than one mission from the same country. An example is
Rome, where many states maintain missions to Italy and another to the Holy See. It is
not customary for these missions to share premises nor diplomatic personnel. At
present, only the Iraqi missions to Italy and the Holy See share premises; however, two
ambassadors are appointed, one to each country. In the case of the UN's Food
Agencies, the Head of Mission to the Italian Republic is usually accredited as
permanent representative. The United States maintains a separate United States
Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome, whose head is the United States Ambassador to
the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture. Kolkata, India hosts two
Bangladeshi Deputy High Commissions, one at Park Circus and another at Mirza Galib
Street. This was done to reduce overcrowding inside the Deputy High Commission. At
first the Park Circus was opened and later, the one at Mirza Galib Street. Now both the
Deputy High Commissions issue Bangladeshi visa.
Non-Diplomatic Offices
Governments of states not recognized by the receiving state and of territories that make
no claim to be sovereign states may set up offices abroad that do not have official
diplomatic status as defined by the Vienna Convention. Examples are the Taipei
Economic and Cultural Representative Offices that represent the government of the
Republic of China; Somaliland's Representative Offices in London, Addis Ababa, Rome,
and Washington, D.C.; the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices that represent the
government of that territory. Such offices assume some of the non-diplomatic functions
of diplomatic posts, such as promoting trade interests and providing assistance to its
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citizens and residents. They are nevertheless not diplomatic missions, their personnel
are not diplomats and do not have diplomatic visas, although there may be legislation
providing for personal immunities and tax privileges, as in the case of the Hong Kong
offices in London and Toronto, for example.
________
Paradiplomacy
Paradiplomacy is international relations conducted by subnational or regional
governments on their own, with a view to promoting their own interests. With
globalisation, non-state regions play an increasingly influential international role.
Regions, federal states, provinces and cities seek their way to promote trade,
investments, cooperation and partnership in a long list of subjects and account for a
significant part of today's cross-borders contacts. This trend raises new interesting
questions concerning public international law and opens a debate on the future of the
state system that has provided the grounds for the international political order in the last
centuries.
Although the term "paradiplomacy" would be casually employed in the 1980s, it was
introduced into the academic debate by the Canadian scholar Panayotis Soldatos. The
American author Ivo Duchacek further developed the concept and became one of its
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main theoreticians. Other current denominations for paradiplomacy and related
concepts are: multilayered diplomacy, substate diplomacy and intermestic affairs.
This latter concept expresses a growing trend to the internationalization of domestic
("intermestic") issues, which takes local and regional concerns to the center stage of
international affairs.
The intention of local governments is thus to promote development by exploring
complementarity with partners facing similar problems, with a view to joining forces to
arrive at solutions more easily. In addition, they explore opportunities alongside
international organizations that offer assistance programs for local development
projects.
History of The Decentralized International Cooperation
In its "decentralized" dimension, international cooperation is a phenomenon that
emerged following the Second World War, when local governments in Europe -
especially those in France, which were active coordinators of this new form of
interaction - signed twinning agreements, principally with German local governments, in
order to promote peaceful coexistence and the reconstruction of Europe. At that time,
the twinning agreements had a strong cultural and political character while
decentralized cooperation had the overarching aim of maintaining peace in the postwar
period. However, from the 1970s, the interdependence created by globalization in
different fields combined with the evolution of the concept of cooperation (from an
assistance-driven to a developmental approach) to elevate the nature of the
agreements to another level. At that point, local governments, as they acquired greater
autonomy, recognized the importance of international issues in their day-to-day
processes and saw decentralized cooperation as a means of overcoming their regional
limitations, whether economic, technological, social, or others. From then on, the
international participation of local governments has been increasingly evident in
practice.
Context
Paradiplomacy may be performed both in support of and in complementarity to the
central state conducted diplomacy, or come in conflict or compete with it. Duchacek
points out a distinction between: a) cross-border regional microdiplomacy, b)
transregional microdiplomacy and c) global paradiplomacy, to describe: a) contacts
between non-central units situated across borders in different states, b) contacts
between non-central units without a common border but situated in neighboring states
and c) contacts between units belonging to states without common borders. A
comprising view of the phenomenon should also consider contacts in a wide range of
multilateral associations of local authorities.
Non-central governments may formally develop official international relations by: a)
sending delegations in official visits; b) signing agreements, memoranda of
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understanding and other instruments; c) participating in international "local" fora; d)
establishing permanent representative offices or delegations abroad.
Local governments seek international cooperation for economic, cultural or political
reasons. In the economic field, it is known that most central governments cannot
properly assist local communities in all their needs. They may lack expertise and cadres
to fully understand local realities and to deal with their complexities. Local governments
tend to think that central authorities do not show sufficient interest in helping them and
find themselves perfectly able to pursue their own interest.
In the cultural field, some regions may seek to promote themselves internationally as an
autonomous cultural entity. This is the case of the Spanish autonomous communities of
Catalonia and the Basque Country. Some regions may seek to cooperate with their
diasporas worldwide and try to gain the support of their nationals abroad in attaining
their diplomatic goals.
As to the political aspects, local governments may join efforts internationally to pressure
their central governments into a desired course of action. This strategy is exemplified in
the case of eight memoranda of understanding signed, in the years 1980, between
three American states and three Canadian provinces to control and combat acid rain, as
the Reagan Administration and the American Congress could not reach a consensus on
the matter. The cross-borders paradiplomatic efforts eventually led Washington to
amend the Clean Air Act in 1990 and to sign with Canada, in 1991, the US/Canada Air
Quality Agreement in which both countries agree on a timetable to reduce acid
emissions.
A particular kind of local political activism is called "protodiplomacy", through which a
local government may seek international support for their emancipation or
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independence plans. This is typically the case of the Canadian province of Québec in
the seventies, under the Parti Québécois.
Non-central governments may be allowed to negotiate and sign agreements with foreign
non-central authorities or even with the government of a foreign state. Conditions can
vary largely from a limited capacity to negotiate with the assistance of their central
authorities to a most complete autonomy based on sovereign constitutional
prerogatives.
This can not be the object of the international law. Only the internal law of the states is
to determine which internal powers are entitled to do so and to which extent. In some
states, the outward relations of their non-central governments is a constitutional matter
directly related to the issue of legal competence.
City Diplomacy
In recent years the term 'city diplomacy' has gained increased usage and acceptance,
particularly as a strand of paradiplomacy and public diplomacy. It is formally used in the
workings of the United Cities and Local Governments and the C40 Cities Climate
Leadership Group and recognised by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. A March
2014 debate in the British House of Lords acknowledged the evolution of town twinning
into city diplomacy, particularly around trade and tourism, but also in culture and postconflict
reconciliation.
Federalism
Federative countries ordinarily set apart in their constitutions, when it comes to the
internal division of powers, matters that are exclusive of the central authority. "National
defense", "currency" and "external relations" are typically the case.
However, as cross-border contacts become an imperative for sub-national communities,
diplomacy is increasingly becoming a decentralized prerogative. Some states do
formally recognize the stakes their political and administrative units have in foreign
affairs and have, accordingly, set the required legal basis at a constitutional level. Legal
provisions on this matter are present in the constitution of the following federations:
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Germany
Russian Federation
Switzerland
United States
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Paradiplomacy by Country
Argentina
Since 1994, an amendment to the Constitución de la Republica allows the provinces of
Argentina (articles 124 and 125) to establish treaties and agreements with foreign
nations to the effect of the administration of justice, economic interest or common utility
works. Those treaties are "partial" (non-political) and must not contravene national law,
affect the nation's public credit nor go against the external policies of the Argentine
nation. It must also be approved by the National Congress.
Austria
The
Constitution
of Austria
restricts the
states'
capacity to
establish
formal
external ties
to crossborder
issues.
Article 16 of
the reformed
text (28. June
2002) allows
the Länder
(states) to
conclude
treaties with
neighboring
states or with
its constituent
states in
matters of
their
constitutional
competence. The governor of the Land must inform the federal government from whom
he must obtain authorization before engaging in international negotiations. If the federal
government fails to respond within eight weeks, the request will be deemed to have
been approved. The approval, whether express or tacit, obliges the Federal President to
the agreed text, which must be countersigned by a federal authority. However, upon
request of the federal government, the Länder must denounce the treaty. If the Land
does not dully complies with its obligation, the federal government overtakes the
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esponsibility. Paragraphs 4 and 5 of Article 16 regulate further the competencies of the
Länder and of the federal state in the implementation of treaties.
Belgium
A Belgium 1993 constitutional revision granted Regions and Communities the right to
develop international co-operation, including the celebration of treaties, in matters of
their exclusive competence (article 167 (3)). Cultural and educational matters are,
according to article 127 (3), those fields of their exclusive competence. This faculty
includes the drafting of treaties, which are ratified by the French and the Flemish
Community Councils by decree (article 128 (1.1)). Article 130 (4) provides the same
right to the German-speaking Community, and adds "personal issues" to its fields of
competence.
Since the Communities have acquired exclusive right to develop their international
relations on those exclusive matters, the King cannot sign, ratify or denounce treaties
on their behalf. Only the treaties concluded before 18 May 1993 may be denounced by
the King. The rigidity of Belgium sphere of competences raised legal difficulties to the
approval of international treaties dealing with both federal and community's issues.
These treaties are known as traités mixtes, and is the object of a co-operation
agreement between the federal state, the Communities and the Regions (8 Mars 1994),
which provides for a complex mechanism of shared responsibilities.
Canada
Canadian provinces are among the most active sub-national units on the international
stage. The total amount spent on diplomacy by the ten Canadian provinces is equal to
that of the fifty American states, despite the fact Canada's population is one-ninth the
size and the economy is only one-fourteenth as large. Canadian provinces are largely
motivated by economic concerns stemming from the high degree of economic diversity
between regions of the country and because of Canada's integration into world markets,
especially the US market via NAFTA.
Nine of the ten provinces trade more with the United States than with the rest of
Canada. Relations with major trading partners, most especially the United States, are
the most important. At the same time Quebec nationalism has motivated the Frenchspeaking
province of Quebec to pursue closer ties with France and the other members
of la Francophonie. Furthermore, Canada's constitution is generally interpreted in a
decentralist way, giving the provinces a great deal of responsibilities.
While Québec has the strongest paradiplomatic presence, British Columbia and
Saskatchewan formerly operated economic trade offices abroad; Nova Scotia operated
a tourism office in Portland, Maine until 2009. Ontario formerly had representation in
Boston, Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas; it continues to promote the province's industries
from delegations in New York City and Los Angeles
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Germany
The Basic Law of Germany states in its article 32(3) that "Insofar as the Länder have
power to legislate, they may, with the consent of the Federal Government, conclude
treaties with foreign states". The federal government must consult with the Länder, "in
sufficient time", before concluding an international treaty that affects the special interest
of one or more Länder. Article 59(2) requires the consent or participation of the
Bundesrat (the German senate), as one of the "bodies competent in any specific case",
on the approval of Treaties "which regulate the political relations of the Federation or
relate to matters of Federal legislation". The German Bundesrat has been especially
keen to assure the participation of the Länder in the European decision-making process.
Russia and The Soviet Union
Russia, the world's most extensive state, shows a tradition of conveying the weight of its
territorial units to foster external policy objectives. The Soviet Union is the only country
ever to have subnational entities (the Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR) recognized
as member states in the United Nations, which lasted from 1945 to 1991. {{small|(See:
Ukraine and the UN) That situation was not to be reflected in constitutional law until the
1977 Soviet Constitution stipulated that a Union republic "has the right to enter into
relations with other states, conclude treaties with them, exchange diplomatic and
consular representatives, and take part in the work of international organizations"
(article 80). The new text went as far as to formally declare that each Union republic
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"shall retain the right freely to secede from the USSR" (Article 72), which all republics
ultimately exercised in 1991.
The 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation does not explicitly confer its noncentral
authorities the same rights, but one can see from article 72 that "coordination of
the international and external economic relations of the subjects of the Russian
Federation" (n) belongs to the joint jurisdiction of the Russian Federation and the
subjects of the Russian Federation, and that, according to paragraph 2, this provision
"shall equally apply to the republics, territories, regions, federal cities, the autonomous
region and autonomous areas".
Switzerland
Article 54 of the Swiss Constitution states that foreign relations are a federal matter.
However, the cantons shall be considered, having they a say in the preparation of
decisions of foreign policy concerning their competencies or their essential interests,
whenever they are affected, and participate in international negotiations as appropriate,
as stated in Article 55. The cantons may also conclude treaties with foreign countries
within the domain relevant to their competencies, provided they are not contrary to the
law and interests of the Federation nor to the right of other cantons. They may deal
directly with subordinated foreign authorities, but treaties concluded with foreign nations
can only be signed by the central authorities (Article 56). Article 147 reinforces the
cantons' role in Swiss foreign affairs by stating that "the cantons (...) are heard in the
course of the preparation of important decrees and other projects of substantial impact,
and on important international treaties". Provisions concerning mandatory and optional
referenda concerning the entry of Switzerland into organizations for collective security,
into supranational communities or the implementation of some international treaties
(Articles 140, 141 and 141a) may also imply cantonal participation if such referendum is
proposed by eight cantons.
United States
Having established that the power to make treaties and conduct external affairs belong
to the president and the Congress, the first federal constitution sets an array of
prohibitions to the States in Section 10 of Article I. The states shall not "enter into any
Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation". However, the third paragraph of the same Section
10 opens the possibility for the States to engage in international affairs by stating that
"no State shall, without the Consent of Congress, [...] enter into any Agreement or
Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually
invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay". A double negation ("no
State shall, without the Consent of Congress") implies that they are actually allowed to
"compact with a foreign Power", as long as the Congress sanctioned those acts. This
control was meant to assure that international commitments contracted by the States
were not against the federal law. In more recent times, the huge volume of international
business conducted by state authorities - acting in present days 50 States - cannot
come under congressional control in practical terms. Even though an unlawful act on
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this domain may be overruled by the Congress, experience has shown that international
paradiplomatic affairs reflect a legitimate interest of local communities and that the
states' authorities would hardly overstep their legal competencies.
China
In strict sense, China does not engage in paradiplomacy. It is considered a
phenomenon of "multilayered diplomacy". In spite of the active role Chinese provincial,
municipal and district leaders play on the diplomatic field, these government officials do
not act on behalf of local political groups or from a merely “local” perspective. They are
indeed extensions of the central government, carrying out policies outlined by the
Communist Party as long as their interests are convergent with those of Beijing. This is
evidenced by the fact that the internationalization of Chinese non-central governments
was primarily a creative product of the international isolation of the Chinese central
government caused by the 1989 Tiananmen crisis. However, this does not mean that
local needs and priorities are disregarded as secondary. Local particularities are to be
heeded as well.
Being a unitary political system, provincial and municipal administrations are expected
to pursue China’s foreign policies concerning trade, investment, culture, education,
tourism and sports. The existence of ethnic minorities accounts for the creation of the
five provincial-level autonomous regions, which enjoy a high degree of autonomy.
There is no text of law regulating diplomatic activities carried out by local authorities. In
fact, those relations are agreed upon among local governments, local permanent
committees of the Communist Party and local Foreign Affairs Office (FAO) subordinated
to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Diplomatic initiatives at local level can be initiated and
undertaken by any of those administrative bodies. Friendship associations, usually
under the management of the FAOs, act to promote contacts with non-central
governments abroad and organizing events on international cooperation. Twinning
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agreements are widely observed as a means to establish permanent links with noncentral
governments elsewhere.
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V. The Lawyers’
War Room
A war room is a meeting room for the purpose of discussing project management.
The term project management involves the planning and strategizing of resources to
accomplish a project. A project is a goal with a specific timetable to create a service or
product of worth. The room is usually conveniently located, possibly in the center of the
office, where members of the project management team are available to answer
questions, discuss issues and answer the phone.
The room is a place where project managers discuss the development of a plan to
specifically and successfully accomplish the project. In addition, they may discuss the
resources needed such as man power, the budget, the timeline and possible challenges
to be faced and what can be done about the pitfalls which may occur. In the room, they
also talk about the execution of the project, the step by step process of accomplishing
their goal. Finally, the completion of the project is discussed in the war room.
To aid in the process, valuable visual information such as budget, time table and project
information are available as charts in the war room.
________
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It’s War! Tips on Preparing and Running
a Litigation War Room
Most litigators are familiar with the nature of a war room—that heralded place in which
attorneys, paralegals, and consultants gather immediately before and all during trial. But
not all war rooms operate alike.
Yes, all are filled with hard-working people who are usually anxious about the upcoming
trial. And all capture the drama of deadlines and raw emotion as well as the thrill of
preparing for battle. But while some operate with well-trained troops—with each person
knowing his or her role and having the resources to fulfill their duties—others suffer from
a lack of preparation, organization, and delegation as well as the stress that such
situations engender.
The primary purpose of a war room is to allow trial team members to collaborate on
finalizing the most effective courtroom presentation possible. As such, the war room is a
critical part of the trial process because it is in there that the case presentation truly
comes together. Walk into a well-run war room and you’ll see trial lawyers rehearsing,
witnesses getting prepped, graphics being finalized, and changes being made based on
recent judicial rulings. Despite the organization, the atmosphere is generally laced with
adrenalin because even well-prepared teams have a lot to pull together before they
present their case to the jury. And because most trial teams don’t do this very often,
there is the nervous energy associated with that perennial question: “have we done
enough?”
Indeed, due to the high percentage of cases that settle, not all litigators get a lot of
experience in creating and participating in war rooms. Yet, it’s those few weeks when
you’re in the war room when you need to be at your absolute best. With 20 years of
experience as trial strategy and graphics consultants, we have observed hundreds of
trials and have participated in scores of war rooms. As a result, we’ve seen what
strategies work in a war room as well as what strategies don’t. Here are 12 strategies
for preparing and running an effective war room.
Preparing the War Room
Start Early
When it comes to complex cases, the teams that develop their messaging strategy and
courtroom presentations early are much better prepared than those who wait until they
get to the war room to start developing these materials. This is due to a couple of
factors. First, it takes time to develop a good story line—the kind that conveys an
unequivocal version of your client’s story to the jury. Second, starting early helps you
refine your messaging with focus groups and in mock trials. Third, if you arrive at the
war room prepared, you can take the time to rehearse two and even three times, which
will help you feel more natural once you’re in front of the jury and give confidence to the
trial technician who may be assigned to you during your presentation.
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Choose the Right Lieutenant to Oversee Logistics
This is generally a paralegal or a legal assistant who has experienced several war
rooms, knows what to do and is highly efficient. The role of this person is to manage all
the logistics associated with setting up the war room, timing, equipment rentals,
supplies, accommodations, food, and on-site technology. Never underestimate this role;
it’s crucial.
Do Local Reconnaissance
In every war room we’ve worked in—even the most efficient ones—a crisis of some sort
has always erupted. Perhaps a printer breaks down, copies need to be made in the
middle of the night, someone gets sick, or packages need to be delivered by 8 a.m. the
next day. This means that before you even arrive at the war room, your lieutenant
needs to figure out the location of local printers, UPS stores, office supply stores, and
all-night supermarkets and pharmacies. Having this information at your fingertips turns a
crisis into a minor inconvenience. (Hint: A really well-prepared team will post a map with
flags or tacks demarcating those points.)
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Don’t Skimp on People or Equipment
We realize that attorneys (and their clients) are on budgets. But the war room is not the
time to get thrifty. If you bring too few staff and something goes haywire, you won’t have
the bodies and minds available to get the work done. At two in the morning, having the
extra artist that your graphics firm recommended will feel like a godsend. Additionally, if
you bring too little equipment, you may hit a work product log jam, with plenty of people
all standing around.
Replicate The Office
Good office chairs, big tables, and high-speed Internet connections are crucial for an
effective war room, along with good cell phone reception, a dedicated fax line, plenty of
back-up devices, and plenty of office supplies. In other words, a war room in a hotel
basement—where cell phone reception may be dicey at best—is going to hobble your
staff. A war room that has everything a litigation team needs is less likely to make staff
spend their time searching for office supplies and finding wireless coverage. And that
means the team can spend more productive time on the case.
Provide The Comforts Of Home
Mom was right. People perform better if they eat well and get enough sleep. So while
your staff may ask for M&Ms and Red Bull, make sure they also get three square meals,
nutritious snacks, plenty of drinks, access to fitness facilities, and quiet places where
they can work alone, call home or grab 40 winks. This is no minor detail. The human
brain really doesn’t operate effectively unless it’s well-nourished and well-rested. We’ve
all seen people perform at less than their best in court because they have had little to no
sleep the night before.
Running the War Room
Select an Executive Officer to Oversee The War Room
Your executive officer is the “macro” person—the one who understands the case as well
as the intricacies of the war room. Ideally, this person knows the witnesses,
understands the order of the case, and can respond to daily rulings as well as
communicate with everyone from the client to a paralegal to the lead trial attorney.
Choose a Single Point of Contact for Your Lead Attorney
In most cases, lead attorneys do take part in war room activities. But sometimes they fly
in a little later than others or aren’t involved in all the day-to-day decisions. This can
cause trouble at the last minute if they look at an associate’s work, for example, and
say, “I would not present it that way.” Instead, make sure the chief is in the loop with
every decision about what will be said or shown in the courtroom. Perhaps you can plan
to talk to the lead trial lawyer every evening at 6 p.m. so that any work that needs to be
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done can be handled by staff that night. Whatever schedule you make, don’t forget to
have the lead lawyer’s cell phone number and pager so that she can be reached at any
time.
Have Faith in Your Team
Micromanaging every detail in a war room is nearly impossible, even for the most detailoriented
of war room organizers. Make sure you choose team members who you know
will do a good job and whose work you can trust. Then let them do their jobs.
Be a Team Player
In the war room, no one is too good for the small stuff because everything matters. That
means everyone needs to be willing to do the work that needs to be done at that
moment, whether it’s going to UPS to pick up or deliver packages, copying documents,
doing last-minute research, editing exhibits, or listening to opening argument
rehearsals.
Be Flexible
Not everything about your trial strategy can be decided ahead of time. You may
encounter unexpected testimony from a witness, a motion in limine from the judge, or a
sheer shortage of time. While it’s crucial to have your general battle plan laid out ahead
of time, you need to be able to adapt to changing circumstances with grace, speed, and
skill.
Understand Triage
Keep in mind that flexibility is not the same thing as indecisiveness. Indeed, one of the
most important qualities that an attorney can bring to a war room is the ability to make
hard decisions and stick to them. Feel free to muse over options, fiddle with graphics,
and brainstorm on strategies in the months preceding trial. But once you’re in war room
mode, it’s time to make decisions and, when appropriate, let go of an idea or strategy if
it’s no longer useful. This is not the time to create multiple versions of a particular
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graphic. Choose the one that makes the most sense for your case and then move on to
the next. Of course, the other key ingredient to running an effective war room is a sense
of humor. Recognize that things may go wrong, nerves may get frayed, surreal rulings
may be handed down. If you can keep some perspective on the daily chaos, you’re well
on your way not only to staying clear-headed about your case but also to keeping your
team intact and functioning. If you can accomplish all of this, the jury will also notice that
your team is on top of its game. And that, above all else, is what you’re after.
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VI. International
Paradigm Shifting
A Paradigm Shift (Also Radical Theory Change), a concept identified
by the American physicist and philosopher Thomas Kuhn (1922–1996), is a
fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific
discipline. Kuhn contrasted these shifts, which characterize a scientific revolution, to the
activity of normal science, which he described as scientific work done within a prevailing
framework (or paradigm). In this context, the word "paradigm" is used in its
original Greek meaning, as "example".
background that Kuhn published his work.
The nature of scientific
revolutions has been studied
by modern
philosophy since Immanuel
Kant used the phrase in the
preface to his Critique of
Pure Reason (1781). He
referred
to Greek
mathematics and Newtonian
physics. In the 20th century,
new developments in the
basic
concepts
of mathematics, physics,
and biology revitalized
interest in the question
among scholars. It was
against this active
Kuhn presented his notion of a paradigm shift in his influential book The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions (1962). As one commentator summarizes:
Kuhn acknowledges having used the term "paradigm" in two different meanings. In the
first one, "paradigm" designates what the members of a certain scientific community
have in common, that is to say, the whole of techniques, patents and values shared by
the members of the community. In the second sense, the paradigm is a single element
of a whole, say for instance Newton’s Principia, which, acting as a common model or an
example... stands for the explicit rules and thus defines a coherent tradition of
investigation.
Thus the question is for Kuhn to investigate by means of the paradigm what makes
possible the constitution of what he calls "normal science". That is to say, the science
which can decide if a certain problem will be considered scientific or not. Normal
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science does not mean at all a science guided by a coherent system of rules, on the
contrary, the rules can be derived from the paradigms, but the paradigms can guide the
investigation also in the absence of rules.
This is precisely the second meaning of the term "paradigm", which Kuhn considered
the most new and profound, though it is in truth the oldest.
Since the 1960s, the concept of a paradigm shift has also been used in numerous nonscientific
contexts to describe a profound change in a fundamental model or perception
of events, even though Kuhn himself restricted the use of the term to the physical
sciences.
Kuhnian Paradigm Shifts
Kuhn used the duck-rabbit optical illusion, made famous
by Wittgenstein, to demonstrate the way in which a paradigm
shift could cause one to see the same information in an
entirely different way.
An epistemological paradigm shift was called a "scientific
revolution" by epistemologist and historian of
science Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
A scientific revolution occurs, according to Kuhn, when scientists encounter anomalies
that cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific
progress has thereto been made. The paradigm, in Kuhn's view, is not simply the
current theory, but the entire worldview in which it exists, and all of the implications
which come with it. This is based on features of landscape of knowledge that scientists
can identify around them.
There are anomalies for all paradigms, Kuhn maintained, that are brushed away as
acceptable levels of error, or simply ignored and not dealt with (a principal argument
Kuhn uses to reject Karl Popper's model of falsifiability as the key force involved in
scientific change). Rather, according to Kuhn, anomalies have various levels of
significance to the practitioners of science at the time. To put it in the context of early
20th century physics, some scientists found the problems with calculating Mercury's
perihelion more troubling than the Michelson-Morley experiment results, and some the
other way around. Kuhn's model of scientific change differs here, and in many places,
from that of the logical positivists in that it puts an enhanced emphasis on the individual
humans involved as scientists, rather than abstracting science into a purely logical or
philosophical venture.
When enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the
scientific discipline is thrown into a state of crisis, according to Kuhn. During this crisis,
new ideas, perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a new paradigm is
formed, which gains its own new followers, and an intellectual "battle" takes place
between the followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm.
Again, for early 20th century physics, the transition between
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the Maxwellian electromagnetic worldview and the Einsteinian relativistic worldview was
neither instantaneous nor calm, and instead involved a protracted set of "attacks," both
with empirical data as well as rhetorical or philosophical arguments, by both sides, with
the Einsteinian theory winning out in the long run. Again, the weighing of evidence and
importance of new data was fit through the human sieve: some scientists found the
simplicity of Einstein's equations to be most compelling, while some found them more
complicated than the notion of Maxwell's aether which they banished. Some
found Arthur Eddington's photographs of light bending around the sun to be compelling,
while some questioned their accuracy and meaning. Sometimes the convincing force is
just time itself and the human toll it takes, Kuhn said, using a quote from Max Planck: "a
new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see
the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows
up that is familiar with it."
After a given discipline has changed from one paradigm to another, this is called, in
Kuhn's terminology, a scientific revolution or a paradigm shift. It is often this final
conclusion, the result of the long process, that is meant when the term paradigm shift is
used colloquially: simply the (often radical) change of worldview, without reference to
the specificities of Kuhn's historical argument.
In a 2015 retrospective on Kuhn, the philosopher Martin Cohen describes the notion of
the paradigm shift as a kind of intellectual virus – spreading from hard science to social
science and on to the arts and even everyday political rhetoric today. Cohen claims that
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Thomas Kuhn himself had only a very hazy idea of what it might mean and, in line with
the American philosopher of science, Paul Feyerabend, accuses Kuhn of retreating
from the more radical implications of his theory, which are that scientific facts are never
really more than opinions, whose popularity is transitory and far from conclusive.
Science and Paradigm Shift
A common misinterpretation of paradigms is the belief that the discovery of paradigm
shifts and the dynamic nature of science (with its many opportunities for subjective
judgments by scientists) are a case for relativism: the view that all kinds of belief
systems are equal. Kuhn vehemently denies this interpretation and states that when a
scientific paradigm is replaced by a new one, albeit through a complex social process,
the new one is always better, not just different.
These claims of relativism are, however, tied to another claim that Kuhn does at least
somewhat endorse: that the language and theories of different paradigms cannot be
translated into one another or rationally evaluated against one another—that they
are incommensurable. This gave rise to much talk of different peoples and cultures
having radically different worldviews or conceptual schemes—so different that whether
or not one was better, they could not be understood by one another. However,
the philosopher Donald Davidson published a highly regarded essay in 1974, "On the
Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" (Proceedings and Addresses of the American
Philosophical Association, Vol. 47, (1973–1974), pp. 5–20) arguing that the notion that
any languages or theories could be incommensurable with one another was itself
incoherent. If this is correct, Kuhn's claims must be taken in a weaker sense than they
often are. Furthermore, the hold of the Kuhnian analysis on social science has long
been tenuous with the wide application of multi-paradigmatic approaches in order to
understand complex human behaviour (see for example John Hassard, Sociology and
Organization Theory: Positivism, Paradigm and Postmodernity. Cambridge University
Press, 1993, ISBN 0521350344.)
Paradigm shifts tend to be most dramatic in sciences that appear to be stable and
mature, as in physics at the end of the 19th century. At that time, physics seemed to be
a discipline filling in the last few details of a largely worked-out system. In 1900, Lord
Kelvin famously told an assemblage of physicists at the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All
that remains is more and more precise measurement." [8] [veracity of this quote
challenged in Lord Kelvin article] Five years later, Albert Einstein published his paper
on special relativity, which challenged the very simple set of rules laid down
by Newtonian mechanics, which had been used to describe force and motion for over
two hundred years.
In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn wrote, "Successive transition from one
paradigm to another via revolution is the usual developmental pattern of mature
science." (p. 12) Kuhn's idea was itself revolutionary in its time, as it caused a major
change in the way that academics talk about science. Thus, it could be argued that it
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caused or was itself part of a "paradigm shift" in the history and sociology of science.
However, Kuhn would not recognise such a paradigm shift. In the social sciences,
people can still use earlier ideas to discuss the history of science.
Philosophers and historians of science, including Kuhn himself, ultimately accepted a
modified version of Kuhn's model, which synthesizes his original view with the gradualist
model that preceded it.
Natural Sciences
Examples of Paradigm Shifts
Some of the "classical cases" of Kuhnian paradigm shifts in science are:
1543 – The transition in cosmology from a Ptolemaic cosmology to
a Copernican one.
1543 – The acceptance of the work of Andreas Vesalius, whose work De humani
corporis fabrica corrected the numerous errors in the previously-held system
created by Galen.
1687 – The transition in mechanics from Aristotelian mechanics to classical
mechanics.
1783 – The acceptance of Lavoisier's theory of chemical reactions and
combustion in place of phlogiston theory, known as the chemical revolution.
The transition in optics from geometrical optics to physical optics with Augustin-
Jean Fresnel's wave theory.
1826 – The discovery of hyperbolic geometry.
1859 – The revolution in evolution from goal-directed change to Charles
Darwin's natural selection.
1880 - The germ theory of disease began overtaking Galen's miasma theory.
1905 – The development of quantum mechanics, which replaced classical
mechanics at microscopic scales.
1887 to 1905 – The transition from the luminiferous aether present
in space to electromagnetic radiation in spacetime.
1919 – The transition between the worldview of Newtonian gravity and
the Einsteinian General Relativity.
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Social Sciences
In Kuhn's view, the existence of a single reigning paradigm is characteristic of the
natural sciences, while philosophy and much of social science were characterized by a
"tradition of claims, counterclaims, and debates over fundamentals." Others have
applied Kuhn's concept of paradigm shift to the social sciences.
The movement known as the cognitive revolution moved away
from behaviourist approaches to psychological study and the acceptance
of cognition as central to studying human behaviour.
The Keynesian revolution is typically viewed as a major shift
in macroeconomics. According to John Kenneth Galbraith, Say's Law dominated
economic thought prior to Keynes for over a century, and the shift to
Keynesianism was difficult. Economists who contradicted the law, which implied
that underemployment and underinvestment (coupled with oversaving) were
virtually impossible, risked losing their careers. In his magnum opus, Keynes
cited one of his predecessors, John A. Hobson, who was repeatedly denied
positions at universities for his heretical theory.
Later, the movement for monetarism over Keynesianism marked a second
divisive shift. Monetarists held that fiscal policy was not effective for
stabilizing inflation, that it was solely a monetary phenomenon, in contrast to
the Keynesian view of the time was that both fiscal and monetary policy were
important. Keynesians later adopted much of the monetarists' view of the quantity
theory of money and shifting Phillips curve, theories they initially rejected.
First proposed by Ferdinand de Saussure in 1879, the laryngeal theory in Indo-
European linguistics postulated the existence of "laryngeal" consonants in
the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE), a theory that was confirmed by the
discovery of the Hittite language in the early 20th century. The theory has since
been accepted by the vast majority of linguists, paving the way for the internal
reconstruction of the syntax and grammatical rules of PIE and is considered one
of the most significant developments in linguistics since the initial discovery of
the Indo-European language family.
Applied Sciences
More recently, paradigm shifts are also recognisable in applied sciences:
In medicine, the transition from "clinical judgment" to evidence-based medicine
In software engineering, the transition from the Rational Paradigm to the
Empirical Paradigm
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Marketing
I
n the later part of the 1990s, 'paradigm shift' emerged as a buzzword, popularized
as marketing speak and appearing more frequently in print and publication. In his
book Mind The Gaffe, author Larry Trask advises readers to refrain from using it, and to
use caution when reading anything that contains the phrase. It is referred to in several
articles and books as abused and overused to the point of becoming meaningless.
Other Uses
The term "paradigm shift" has found uses in other contexts, representing the notion of a
major change in a certain thought-pattern—a radical change in personal beliefs,
complex systems or organizations, replacing the former way of thinking or organizing
with a radically different way of thinking or organizing:
M. L. Handa, a professor of sociology in education at O.I.S.E. University of
Toronto, Canada, developed the concept of a paradigm within the context of
social sciences. He defines what he means by "paradigm" and introduces the
idea of a "social paradigm". In addition, he identifies the basic component of any
social paradigm. Like Kuhn, he addresses the issue of changing paradigms, the
process popularly known as "paradigm shift". In this respect, he focuses on the
social circumstances which precipitate such a shift. Relatedly, he addresses how
that shift affects social institutions, including the institution of education.
The concept has been developed for technology and economics in the
identification of new techno-economic paradigms as changes in technological
systems that have a major influence on the behaviour of the entire economy
(Carlota Perez; earlier work only on technological paradigms by Giovanni Dosi).
This concept is linked to Joseph Schumpeter's idea of creative destruction.
Examples include the move to mass production and the introduction of
microelectronics.
Two photographs of the Earth from space, "Earthrise" (1968) and "The Blue
Marble" (1972), are thought to have helped to usher in
the environmentalist movement which gained great prominence in the years
immediately following distribution of those images.
Hans Küng applies Thomas Kuhn's theory of paradigm change to the entire
history of Christian thought and theology. He identifies six historical
"macromodels": 1) the apocalyptic paradigm of primitive Christianity, 2) the
Hellenistic paradigm of the patristic period, 3) the medieval Roman Catholic
paradigm, 4) the Protestant (Reformation) paradigm, 5) the modern
Enlightenment paradigm, and 6) the emerging ecumenical paradigm. He also
discusses five analogies between natural science and theology in relation to
paradigm shifts. Küng addresses paradigm change in his books, Paradigm
Change in Theology and Theology for the Third Millennium: An Ecumenical View.
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________
Attitude Polarization
Attitude Polarization, also known as belief polarization and polarization
effect, is a phenomenon in which a disagreement becomes more extreme as the
different parties consider evidence on the issue. It is one of the effects of confirmation
bias: the tendency of people to search for and interpret evidence selectively, to reinforce
their current beliefs or attitudes. When people encounter ambiguous evidence, this bias
can potentially result in each of them interpreting it as in support of their existing
attitudes, widening rather than narrowing the disagreement between them.
The effect is observed with issues that activate emotions, such as political "hot button"
issues. For most issues, new evidence does not produce a polarization effect. For those
issues where polarization is found, mere thinking about the issue, without contemplating
new evidence, produces the effect. Social comparison processes have also been
invoked as an explanation for the effect, which is increased by settings in which people
repeat and validate each other's statements. This apparent tendency is of interest not
only to psychologists, but also to sociologists and philosophers.
Empirical Findings
Since the late 1960s, psychologists have carried out a number of studies on various
aspects of attitude polarization.
In 1979, Charles Lord, Lee Ross and Mark Lepper performed a study in which they
selected two groups of people, one group strongly in favor of capital punishment, the
other strongly opposed. The researchers initially measured the strength with which
people held their position. Later, both the pro- and anti-capital punishment people were
put into small groups and shown one of two cards, each containing a statement about
the results of a research project written on it. For example:
Kroner and Phillips (1977) compared murder rates for the year before and the year after
adoption of capital punishment in 14 states. In 11 of the 14 states, murder rates were
lower after adoption of the death penalty. This research supports the deterrent effect of
the death penalty.
or:
Palmer and Crandall (1977) compared murder rates in 10 pairs of neighboring states
with different capital punishment laws. In 8 of the 10 pairs, murder rates were higher in
the state with capital punishment. This research opposes the deterrent effect of the
death penalty.
The researchers again asked people about the strength of their beliefs about the
deterrence effect of the death penalty, and, this time, also asked them about the effect
that the research had had on their attitudes.
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In the next stage of the research, the participants were given more information about
the study described on the card they received, including details of the research,
critiques of the research, and the researchers' responses to those critiques. The
participants' degree of commitment to their original positions were re-measured, and the
participants were asked about the quality of the research and the effect the research
had on their beliefs. Finally, the trial was rerun on all participants using a card that
supported the opposite position to that they had initially seen.
The researchers found that people tended to believe that research that supported their
original views had been better conducted and was more convincing than research that
didn't. Whichever position they held initially, people tended to hold that position more
strongly after reading research that supported it. Lord et al. point out that it is
reasonable for people to be less critical of research that supports their current position,
but it seems less rational for people to significantly increase the strength of their
attitudes when they read supporting evidence. When people had read both the research
that supported their views and the research that did not, they tended to hold their
original attitudes more strongly than before they received that information. These results
should be understood in the context of several problems in the implementation of the
study, including the fact the researchers changed the scaling of the outcome of the
variable, so measuring attitude change was impossible, and measured polarization
using a subjective assessment of attitude change not a direct measure of how much
change had occurred.
________
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Group Polarization
In social psychology, Group Polarization refers to the tendency for a group to
make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members. These
more extreme decisions are towards greater risk if individuals' initial tendencies are to
be risky and towards greater caution if individuals' initial tendencies are to be cautious.
The phenomenon also holds that a group's attitude toward a situation may change in
the sense that the individuals' initial attitudes have strengthened and intensified after
group discussion, a phenomenon known as attitude polarization.
Overview
Group polarization is an important phenomenon in social psychology and is observable
in many social contexts. For example, a group of women who hold moderately feminist
views tend to demonstrate heightened pro-feminist beliefs following group discussion.
Similarly, have shown that after deliberating together, mock jury members often decided
on punitive damage awards that were either larger or smaller than the amount any
individual juror had favored prior to deliberation.
The studies indicated that when the jurors favored a relatively low award, discussion
would lead to an even more lenient result, while if the jury was inclined to impose a stiff
penalty, discussion would make it even harsher.
Moreover, in recent years, the Internet and online social media have also presented
opportunities to observe group polarization and compile new research. Psychologists
have found that social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter demonstrate that
group polarization can occur even when a group is not physically together.
As long as the group of individuals begins with the same fundamental opinion on the
topic and a consistent dialogue is kept going, group polarization can occur.
Research has suggested that well-established groups suffer less from polarization, as
do groups discussing problems that are well known to them. However, in situations
where groups are somewhat newly formed and tasks are new, group polarization can
demonstrate a more profound influence on the decision-making.
________
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From 'Non-Discrimination' to 'Reasonableness': A Paradigm
Shift in International Economic Law?
Abstract
Jean Monnet Working Paper No. 01/05
Posted: 10 Aug 2006
Federico Ortino
King's College London – The Dickson Poon School of Law
Date Written: April 2005
Among the few basic legal instruments employed in international economic law for the
promotion of trade and investment, the National Treatment (NT) principle and the
reasonableness principle constitute the two predominant ones.
While both
norms deal
principally
with national
measures of
legislative,
administrative
or judicial
nature taken
to regulate
the internal
market, they
appear to
represent two
quite different
legal
paradigms.
By requiring
each member
to treat
products and
investors of the other member (at least) as well as it treats its own products and
investors, the NT principle provides for a 'relative' standard of treatment. In other words,
the NT principle does not guarantee a specific level of protection or that foreign
products or investors will receive a 'fair' or 'reasonable' treatment. On the other hand,
the reasonableness principle provides for an 'absolute' standard of treatment, in as far
as it requires States to recognize to foreign products and investors a certain level of
treatment independently of the treatment afforded to domestic products and investors.
Although the concept of reasonableness may be given potentially a broad range of
meanings, it usually refers to both substantive and procedural requirements, including
concepts such as 'suitability', 'necessity', 'proportionality', 'transparency' and
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'participation'. Accordingly, the reach of the reasonableness principle appears to be
quite broad compared to that of the NT principle and the normative standards imposed
on States by the former seem to bite deeper than those imposed by the latter.
By focusing specifically on the experience of the WTO and NAFTA in promoting trade
and investment across countries through the NT principle and the reasonableness
principle (i.e., Articles III/XX GATT and 1102 NAFTA; Articles 2 TBT and 1105 NAFTA),
this paper tries, first of all, to show that the two norms under consideration do not
represent two completely different legal paradigms. On the contrary, the overlap
between non-discrimination and reasonableness is quite broad and, depending on the
actual drafting, it may even be total. Secondly, and without arguing for the total
abandonment of the concept of nationality discrimination as an instrument for global
economic governance, the paper argues that in terms of overall legitimacy, there are
several reasons supporting the claim that a rationality-based regime should be favored
to one based on non-discrimination.
________
Social Conflict Theory
Social Conflict Theory is a Marxist-based social theory which argues that
individuals and groups (social classes) within society interact on the basis
of conflict rather than consensus. Through various forms of conflict, groups will tend to
attain differing amounts of material and non-material resources (e.g. the wealthy vs. the
poor). More powerful groups will tend to use their power in order to retain power and
exploit groups with less power.
Conflict theorists view conflict as an engine of change, since conflict produces
contradictions which are sometimes resolved, creating new conflicts and contradictions
in an ongoing dialectic. In the classic example of historical materialism, Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engelsargued that all of human history is the result of conflict
between classes, which evolved over time in accordance with changes in society's
means of meeting its material needs, i.e. changes in society's mode of production.
Example (Sample of The Following)
Consider the relationship between the owner of a housing complex and a tenant in that
same housing complex. A consensus theorist might suggest that the relationship
between the owner and the tenant is founded on mutual benefit. In contrast, a conflict
theorist might argue the relationship is based on a conflict in which the owner and
tenant are struggling against each other. Their relationship is defined by the balance in
their abilities to extract resources from each other, e.g. rent payments or a place to live.
The bounds of the relationship are set where each is extracting the maximum possible
amount of resources out of the other.
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Conflict can take many forms and involve struggle over many different types of
resources, including status. However, formal conflict theory had its foundations in the
analysis of class conflict, and the example of the owner and the tenant can be
understood in terms of class conflict. In class conflict, owners are likely to have relative
advantages over non-owners. For example, the legal system underlying the relationship
between the owner and tenant can be biased in favor of the owner. Suppose the owner
wishes to keep the tenant's security deposit after that tenant has moved out of the
owner's residence. In legal systems based on English common law, the owner is only
required to notify the tenant that the security deposit is being withheld. To regain the
security deposit, the tenant must file a lawsuit. The tenant bears the burden of proof and
is therefore required to prove that the residence was adequately cleaned before moveout.
This can be a very difficult or even impossible task.
To summarize the example, conflict theorists view the relationship between the owner
and tenant as being built primarily on conflict rather than harmony. Even though the
owner-tenant relationship may often appear harmonious, any visible harmony is only a
product of the law and other elements of the superstructure which constrain the
relationship and which are themselves a product of an even deeper conflict, class
conflict. A conflict theorist would say that conflict theory holds more explanatory power
than consensus theory in this situation since consensus theory cannot explain lawsuits
between owners and tenants nor the legal foundations of the asymmetrical power
relationship between the two.
Social Conflict Theories
From a social conflict theorist/marxism point of view social class and inequality emerges
because the social structure is based on conflict and contradictions. Contradictions in
interests and conflict over scarce resources between groups is the foundation of social
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society, according to the social conflict theory (Engels & Marx, 1848). The higher class
will try to maintain their privileges, power, status and social position - and therefore try
to influence politics, education, and other institutions to protect and limit access to their
forms of capital and resources. Whereas the lower class - in contradiction to the higher
class - has very different interests. They do not have specific forms of capital that they
need to protect. All they are interested in is in gaining access to the resources and
capital of the higher class. For example, education: the lower class will do everything to
gain access to the higher class resources based on democratizing and liberalizing
education systems because these forms of capital are thought to be of value for future
success. The various institutions of society such as the legal and political system are
instruments of ruling class domination and serve to further its interests. Marx believed
that western society developed through four main epochs—primitive
communism, ancient society, feudal society and capitalist society. Primitive communism
is represented by the societies of pre-history and provides the only example of the
classless society. From then all societies are divided into two major classes—master
and slaves in ancient society, lords and serfs in feudal society and capitalist and wage
laborers in capitalist society.
Weber sees class in economic terms. He argues that classes develop in market
economies in which individuals compete for economic gain. He defines a class as a
group of individuals who share a similar position in market economy and by virtue of
that fact receive similar economic rewards. Thus a person's class situation is basically
his market situation. Those who share a similar class situation also share similar life
chances. Their economic position will directly affect their chances of obtaining the things
defined as desirable in their society.
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VII. Evidence-Based
Policy Deployment
Evidence-Based Policy (EBP) is a term often applied in multiple fields
of public policy to refer to situations whereby policy decisions are informed by rigorously
established objective evidence. Underlying many of the calls for 'evidence based policy'
is often a (stated or unstated) concern with fidelity to scientific good practice, reflecting
the belief that social goals are best served when scientific evidence is used rigorously
and comprehensively to inform decisions, rather than in a piecemeal, manipulated, or
cherry-picked manner.
Conceptually the term has been seen as an extension of the Scientific
method or evidence-based medicine to all areas of public policy.
Some have promoted particular types of evidence as 'best' for policy makers to
consider, including scientifically rigorous evaluation studies such as randomized
controlled trials to identify programs and practices capable of improving policy-relevant
outcomes. However, some areas of policy-relevant knowledge are not well served by
quantitative research, leading to debate about the methods and instruments that are
considered critical for the collection of relevant evidence. For instance, policies that are
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concerned with human rights, public acceptability, or social justice may require other
evidence than what randomized trials provide, or may require moral philosophical
reasoning in addition to considerations of evidence of intervention effect (which
randomised trials are principally designed to provide). Good data, analytical skills and
political support to the use of scientific information, as such, are typically seen as the
important elements of an evidence-based approach.
Although evidence-based policy can be traced as far back as the fourteenth century, it
was more recently popularized by the Blair Government in the United Kingdom. The
Blair Government said they wanted to end the ideological led-based decision making for
policy making. [3] For example, a UK Government white paper published in 1999
("Modernising Government") noted that Government must "produce policies that really
deal with problems, that are forward-looking and shaped by evidence rather than a
response to short-term pressures; that tackle causes not symptoms".
Evidence-based policy is associated with Adrian Smith because in his 1996 presidential
address to the Royal Statistical Society, Smith questioned the current process of policy
making and urged for a more “evidence-based approach” commenting that it has
“valuable lessons to offer”.
Some policy scholars now avoid using the term 'evidence based' policy, using others
such as 'evidence informed'. This language shift allows continued thinking about the
underlying desire to improve evidence use in terms of its rigor or quality, while avoiding
some of the key limitations or reductionist ideas at times seen with the 'evidence based'
language. Still, the language of 'evidence based' policy is widely used and, as such, can
be interpreted to reflect a desire for evidence to be used well or appropriately in one
way or another - such as by ensuring systematic consideration of rigorous and high
quality policy relevant evidence, or by avoiding biased and erroneous applications of
evidence for political ends.
History of Evidence-Based Policy
The earliest form of evidence-based policy was tariff-making in Australia which was
required under legislation to be educated by the public report issued by the Tariff Board.
These reports were initially only reporting on the impacts but changed to also report on
the effects of industries and the economy.
Many scholars see the term "evidence-based policy" as evolving from "evidence-based
medicine", in which research findings are used as the support for clinical decisions and
evidence is gathered by randomized controlled trials (RCTs), which is comparing a
treatment group with a placebo group to measure results. In 1993, the Cochrane
Collaboration was established in the UK, and works to keep all RCTs up-to-date and
provides "Cochrane reviews" which provides primary research in human health and
health policy. There was then an increase in research and policy activists pushing for
more evidence-based policy-making which led to the formation of the sister organization
to Cochrane Collaboration, the Campbell Collaboration in 1999. The Campbell
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Collaboration conducts reviews on the best evidence that analyzes the effects of social
and educational policies and practices.
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) became involved in the push for
more evidence-based policy making with its 1.3 million pound grant to the Evidence
Network in 1999. The Evidence Network is a center for evidence-based policy and
practice and is similar to both the Campbell and Cochrane Collaboration.
More recently the Alliance for Useful Evidence has been established, with funding from
ESRC, Big Lottery and Nesta, to champion the use of evidence in social policy and
practice. The Alliance is a UK-wide network that promotes the use of high quality
evidence to inform decisions on strategy, policy and practice through advocacy,
publishing research, sharing ideas and advice, and holding events and training.
Recently questions have been raised about the conflicts-of-interest inherent to
evidence-based decision-making used in public policy development. In a study of
vocational education in prisons operated by the California Department of Corrections,
Andrew J. Dick, William Rich, and Tony Waters found that political considerations
inevitably intruded into “evidence-based decisions” which were ostensibly technocratic
in nature.
They point out that this is particularly where evidence is paid for by policy makers who
have a vested interest in having past political judgments confirmed, evidence based
research is likely to be corrupted.
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The Methodology of Evidence-Based Policy
There are many methodologies for evidence-based policy but they all share the
following characteristics:
Tests a theory as to why the policy will be effective and what the impacts of the
policy will be if it is successful
Includes a counterfactual: what would have occurred if the policy had not been
implemented
Incorporates some measurement of the impact
Examines both direct and indirect effects that occur because of the policy
Separates the uncertainties and controls for other influences outside of the policy
that may have an effect on the outcome
Should be able to be tested and replicated by a third party
The form of methodology used with evidence-based policy fit under the category of a
cost-benefit framework and are created to estimate a net payoff if the policy was to be
implemented. Because there is a difficulty in quantifying some effects and outcomes of
the policy, it is mostly focused broadly on whether or not benefits will outweigh costs,
instead of using specific values.
Critiques of Evidence-Based Policy
Several critiques have emerged. Paul Cairney, professor of politics and public policy at
the University of Stirling in Scotland, argues that supporters of the idea underestimate
the complexity of policy-making and misconstrue the way that policy decisions are
usually made. Moreover, evidence has emerged of front-line public servants, like
hospital managers, making decisions that actually worsen patients' care in order to hit
pre-ordained targets. This argument was put forward by Professor Jerry Muller of
the Catholic University of America in a book called The Tyranny of Metrics. A
comprehensive list of critiques, including the fact that policies shown to be successful in
one place often fail in others, despite reaching a gold standard of evidence, has been
compiled by the policy platform Apolitical.
Evidence-Based Development Policy
The Overseas Development Institute has pioneered RAPID Outcome Mapping
Approach (ROMA) over the past five years as a means to help aid donors and partners
better transform research into policy initiatives. This approach is supported by other
research within the development community. For instance, in a literature review focused
on development, an integrated, participatory, structured and empowering approach to
Page 80 of 119

using evidence and data in decision-making to inform development decisions was tied
to improved results.
Key Lessons of Evidence-Based Policy-Making
Six key lessons have been developed, which are:
1. Policy processes are complex and rarely linear or logical and simply presenting
information to policy-makers and expecting them to act upon it is very unlikely to
work. Policy processes are not purely linear as they have various stages that
each take varying lengths of time to complete and may in fact be conducted
simultaneously. Strategies must be fluid.
2. Policy is often only weakly informed by research-based evidence due to
information gaps, secrecy, the need for speedy responses, political expediency
and the fact that policy makers are rarely scientists.
3. Research-based evidence can contribute to policies that have a dramatic impact
on lives. Success stories quoted in the UK's Department for International
Development's (DFID) new research strategy include a 22% reduction in
neonatal mortality in Ghana as a result of helping women begin breastfeeding
within one hour of giving birth, and a 43% reduction in deaths among HIV
positive children using a widely available antibiotic.
4. The need for a holistic understanding of the context in which the policy is to be
implemented.
5. Policy entrepreneurs need additional skills to influence policy. They need to be
political fixers, able to understand the politics and identify the key players. They
need to be good storytellers, able to synthesise simple compelling stories from
the results of the research. They need to be good networkers to work effectively
with all the other stakeholders, and they need to be good engineers, building a
programme that pulls all of this together.
6. Policy entrepreneurs need clear intent – they need to really want to do it. Turning
a researcher into a policy entrepreneur, or a research institute or department into
a policy-focused think tank involves a fundamental re-orientation towards policy
engagement rather than academic achievement; engaging much more with the
policy community; developing a research agenda focusing on policy issues rather
than academic interests; acquiring new skills or building multidisciplinary teams;
establishing new internal systems and incentives; spending much more on
communications; producing a different range of outputs; and working more in
partnerships and networks.
These lessons show that the relationship between research, policy and practice is
complex, multi-factoral, non-linear, and highly context specific. What works in one
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situation may not work in another. Developing effective strategies in complex
environments is not straightforward. Simple tools such as cost–benefit analysis, logical
frameworks, traditional project management tools and others may not work on their
own, as they fail to take into account the existing complexity.
Based on research conducted in six Asian and African countries, the Future Health
Systems consortium has identified a set of key strategies for improving uptake of
evidence in to policy, including: improving the technical capacity of policy-makers; better
packaging of research findings; use of social networks; establishment of fora to assist in
linking evidence with policy outcomes.
RAPID Outcome Mapping Approach
ROMA approach takes these lessons into account has been field tested through more
than 40 workshops and training courses worldwide. It is an eight-step approach for each
of which the ODI has developed resources and policy tools to ensure each step is
comprehensively addressed:
1. Define a clear, overarching policy objective.
2. Map the policy context around that issue and identify the key factors that may
influence the policy process. The RAPID framework provides a useful checklist of
questions.
3. Identify the key influential stakeholders. RAPID’s Alignment, Interest and
Influence Matrix (AIIM) can be used to map actors along three dimensions: the
degree of alignment (i.e. agreement) with the proposed policy, their level of
interest in the issue, and their ability to exert influence on the policy process.
4. Develop a theory of change - identify the changes needed among them if they
are to support the desired policy outcome.
5. Develop a strategy to achieve the milestone changes in the process - Force Field
Analysis is a flexible tool that can be used to further understand the forces
supporting and opposing the desired policy change and suggest concrete
responses.
6. Ensure the engagement team has the competencies required to operationalise
the strategy.
7. Establish an action plan for meeting the desired policy objective - useful tools
include the RAPID Information matrix, DFID’s log frame and IDRC’s Outcome
Mapping Strategy Map among them.
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8. Develop a monitoring and learning system, not only to track progress, make any
necessary adjustments and assess the effectiveness of the approach, but also to
learn lessons for the future.
An example of ROMA approach can be seen in the case of the Wildlife Enforcement
Monitoring System (WEMS) Initiative where a systematic approach of agreement has
brought its implementation in Africa.
Results
This has resulted in:
1. Over 50 case studies on successful evidence-based policy engagement have
been compiled, a network
2. Development and facilitation of the evidence-based policy in Development
Network (ebpdn), which links more than 20 institutional partners and thousands
of practitioners working on evidence-based policy processes.
3. Creating an array of practical toolkits designed with civil society organisations,
researchers and progressive policy makers in mind. For example, at the recent
Tokyo Conference on Combating Wildlife crime, United Nations
University and ESRI presented the first case of evidence based policy making
maps on enforcement and compliance of CITES convention.
4. Direct support to civil society organizations (CSOs) to provide training in policy
influencing and strategic communication.
5. Strengthening the capacity for the UK Department for International
Development (DFID) to influence other actors.
The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy
The Coalition is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, whose mission is to increase
government effectiveness through the use of rigorous evidence about “what works.”
Since 2001, the Coalition's work with U.S. Congressional and Executive Branch officials
has advanced evidence-based reforms in U.S. social programs, which have been
enacted into law and policy. The Coalition has no affiliation with any programs or
program models, and no financial interest in the policy ideas it supports, enabling it to
serve as an independent, objective source of expertise to government officials on
evidence-based policy.
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Page 84 of 119

VIII. References
1. https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/evangelism/
2. https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2017/may/evangelism-in-leadership-is-itreally-as-simple-as-5-simple.html
3. https://lawyerswithoutborders.org/general-2/
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_intelligence
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconnaissance
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomatic_mission
7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradiplomacy
8. https://project-management-knowledge.com/definitions/w/war-room/
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
10. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=922524
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_polarization#Attitude_polarization
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_conflict_theory
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_policy
14. https://lawyerswithoutborders.org/
15. http://www.jubilee-centre.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Evangelism-and-Social-
Justice-FINAL.pdf
16. https://www.peacepalacelibrary.nl/ebooks/files/363357696.pdf
17. http://www.tjsl.edu/slomansonb/1.1_FuncRelig.pdf
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Page 88 of 119

Attachment A
Evangelism and Social Justice
Page 89 of 119

Evangelism and
social justice
If it’s the Gospel and not social justice that meets our need for
salvation, shouldn’t evangelism be our priority?
Given the Church’s limited time and resources, should we not
focus on evangelism above all else?
This booklet explores the relationship between evangelism and
social justice. The Bible is clear that both are integral to our faith.
We are called both to make disciples and to love our neighbour
– as part of the same faith. As the ‘salt’ of the land, the Church
is required to play a part in God’s wider plan, including for
the redemption of society as a whole. Further, social justice
has a key part to play in our evangelism. As the early Church
demonstrated, the living word is received best when it is not
only proclaimed but also lived out by its followers.
How can these principles guide us in our mission today?

The tension
If we cut out from the Bible every reference
to justice or evangelism, how much of a
Bible would we have left? Clearly both
are key themes throughout, but some
people make an argument for prioritising
evangelism over social justice.
Such an argument is based around
emphasising different needs. First, it asserts
that an individual’s ultimate need is to be
reconciled to God through salvation. Social
justice may meet some needs, but as it does
not bring this reconciliation it can only ever
meet a secondary need.
Following from this, the argument also
states that we can distinguish between
eternal and temporary needs. Social justice,
through bringing change on this earth
alone, is temporary. Coming to faith and
being reconciled to God is of eternal
significance.
Within the context of the Church’s limited
time and resources, a simple prioritisation
can be made. Through evangelism we can
help others to meet this ultimate and eternal
need. In comparison, though social justice
may be good and valuable, it only meets a
secondary and temporary need.
Whether we accept this argument depends
on how we understand being ‘reconciled’
to God. In the Bible this ultimate need
of reconciliation includes social justice
at its heart. Our reconciliation to God
goes hand in hand with reconciliation
to our neighbour. In other words, the
Gospel’s radical power cannot be confined
to ‘religious belief’ or the ‘spiritual’
sphere alone, but rather demands social
transformation. The Bible does not attach a
secondary significance to social justice: faith
must find its natural outworking in action.
As integral components of the same faith,
it is not a question of either social justice or
evangelism, but always both together.
This view also leads us to question the idea
that social justice only meets a temporary
need. First, as God’s command, it is of
eternal significance for us as Christians.
Second, evangelism and social justice are
both elements of the Church’s mission to
be salt and light. As we will see, God’s wider
redemptive plan for the world takes place
both ‘now’, and ‘not yet’.
“As integral components of the
same faith, it is not a question
of either social justice or
evangelism, but always both
together.”
Finally, this booklet discusses the role that
social justice plays in effective evangelism.
As modelled by the early Church, the ‘living
word’ must not only be proclaimed but
actively lived out, with our good deeds
forming a compelling demonstration of the
faith we confess.
In short then, we can say that faith is
more than evangelism, social justice is
part of a wider redemptive mission, and
evangelism is more than proclamation.
2.7
million
Children killed in
recent conflicts in
D.R. Congo
500,000
Estimated deaths
by 2030 caused
by climate
change
500,000
Unique users of
food banks in
the UK in 2013
The richest
1%
own half of
the world’s
wealth
1

What is social justice?
‘Social justice’ is a term often used with little
definition. In the Old Testament, two key
Hebrew terms are used in the context of
justice: mišpāt . and . sedeq, often translated as
‘justice’ and ‘righteousness’.
Mišpāt . comes from a verb meaning to judge
or govern; to act as lawgiver; to decide
controversy, condemn or punish. The noun
mišpāt . can mean several things, including
the act of deciding a case; the seat of
judgment; a legal sentence or decision; or
the execution of judgment. The word sedeq .
(righteousness) means what is right, just and
normal – whether in speech, government, or
even the weights and measures described in
Deuteronomy 25:15.
In Generous Justice, Tim Keller argues that
mišpāt . can be understood as ‘rectifying
justice’, restoring justice where it has been
lost. Sedeq . refers to ‘primary justice’ – the
conditions of right relationship that, if
practised, would render rectifying justice
unnecessary. Together, these two terms can
help us to understand what ‘social justice’
means. ‘Doing’ social justice includes not only
the righting of wrongs, but the generosity
and social concern which would prevent
injustices arising in the first place.
All this plays out within the context of
relationships. Injustices imply abusive
relationships between powerful and
vulnerable. These unjust relationships can
happen both on a personal level, such as
between an exploitative manager and a lowpaid
worker, and on a societal and structural
level, such as discrimination against an ethnic
minority group.
“Social justice can be summarised
as the creation and restoration of
right relationships in society”
Rectifying these unjust relationships involves
the creation of right relationships based on
biblical principles. In particular, one useful
principle for structuring right relationships
is to think about the Hebrew word hesed. .
Often translated as ‘mercy’, its meaning
is best described as ‘loving kindness’. It is
used to characterise relationships of grace,
compassion, faithfulness and love – so
bringing about justice, righteousness and
holiness in relationships.
Overall, social justice can be summarised
as the creation and restoration of right
relationships in society.
LOOK
INSIDE
2

What does the Bible say?
Social justice: integral to
faith
Hearing that Jesus had silenced
the Sadducees, the Pharisees
got together. One of them, an
expert in the law, tested him with
this question: ‘Teacher, which is
the greatest commandment in
the Law?’ Jesus replied: ‘“Love the
Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with
all your mind.” This is the first and
greatest commandment. And
the second is like it: “Love your
neighbour as yourself.” All the
Law and the Prophets hang on
these two commandments.’
Matthew 22:34-40
In this passage, known as the Great
Commandment, Jesus explains
that every Old Testament law is
designed to protect and strengthen
the relationships between God and
neighbour. Jesus, as the fulfilment of
the law (Matthew 5:17), brings us
hope that these two relationships
will be restored to their right state.
In this way, the fulfilment of Isaiah 61
(as declared in Luke 4) is good news
for the poor, the imprisoned and the
oppressed; not only in terms of being
reconciled with God but in terms of
restoring right relationships of justice,
compassion and generosity between
people in society.
‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the
poor. He has sent me to proclaim
freedom for the prisoners and
recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free, to
proclaim the year of the Lord’s
favour.’
Luke 4:18-19
The good news of the Gospel is
one of transformation in our social
relationships. This should come as no
surprise. While our culture maintains
a clear division between the ‘secular’
social sphere and the ‘sacred’ spiritual
sphere, such a distinction is not
biblical. Passages such as Isaiah 58
show us the error of thinking the
all-powerful sovereign Lord God’s
commands can be neatly confined
within ‘religion’ and not impact social
and economic relationships.
This reflects a principle seen
throughout the Bible: faith by itself, if it
is not accompanied by action, is dead
(James 2:14-17). The everyday material
and social world may seem mundane,
but these are the settings in which our
faith is acted out in the world.
Matthew 25:31-46 is a similarly
stark warning – for Christians, the
command to act justly is not optional or
secondary, but of eternal significance.
‘Then the King will say to those
on his right, “Come, you who
are blessed by my Father; take
your inheritance, the kingdom
prepared for you since the
creation of the world. For I
was hungry and you gave me
something to eat, I was thirsty
and you gave me something to
drink, I was a stranger and you
invited me in, I needed clothes
and you clothed me, I was ill and
you looked after me, I was in
prison and you came to visit me.”’
Matthew 25:34-36
Reconciliation to God is also
reconciliation to neighbour, or in other
words, social justice. This is no awkward
or secondary ‘add on’ to our faith, but
rather, simply our faith put into action
3

across all spheres of society. Ultimately,
social justice, like evangelism, is an
integral aspect of our faith – we can’t
prioritise one at the expense of the
other, but must seek to do both.
The Church and God’s
redemptive mission
The previous section highlighted how
social justice is an integral outworking
of our personal faith as individuals
reconciled to God. At the same time,
we must understand how social justice
fits into God’s wider
“Our mission is
to seek to make
disciple-making
disciples: followers
of Jesus that love
him, love each other
and love the world,
all the while seeking
to give reasons for
the hope that we
have.”
Daniel Strange
redemptive mission
for fallen creation,
and the role that we
together as ‘Church’
can play within it.
The Fall broke our
relationships with
God, each other and
Creation (Genesis
3:8, 15, 17). As we
have already seen,
Jesus came to repair
these relationships.
John Stott describes
this moment as the
‘breaking in of the
kingdom’; the good news that God’s
renewed creation is coming, and so
there is the hope of redemption of
all things in this age. However, at the
same time, the kingdom has not yet
been brought into perfection, and so
we still work within the limits of our
broken selves and world. The Church
serves in the ‘in between times’;
between kingdom come and kingdom
coming, between the ‘now’ and the ‘not
yet’ of redemption.
‘You are the salt of the earth. But
if the salt loses its saltiness, how
can it be made salty again? It is no
longer good for anything, except
to be thrown out and trampled
underfoot. You are the light of the
world. A town built on a hill cannot
be hidden. Neither do people light
a lamp and put it under a bowl.
Instead they put it on its stand, and it
gives light to everyone in the house.
In the same way, let your light shine
before others, that they may see your
good deeds and glorify your Father
in heaven.’
Matthew 5:13-16
The Church’s role can be described as
both ‘serving’ and ‘waiting’ for this full
4

edemption (1 Thessalonians 1:9-10). In
serving, Jesus instructs the Church to
be both salt and light (Matthew 5:13-
16). In the same way that salt acts as a
preservative, we are given the task of
preventing moral decay in society. This
will involve speaking up, acting and
praying. Meanwhile, our good deeds
will shine as a light guiding people to
the glory of the Father. Though we wait
for God to bring redemption in all its
fullness and perfection, we do know
that our service for the Lord is not in
vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).
In short, the mission
of the Church
is to seek the
redemption, renewal
and reconciliation
that Jesus began,
in our relationships
with both God and
our neighbour. As
summarised by Daniel Strange, our
mission is to ‘seek to make disciplemaking
disciples: followers of Jesus
that love him, love each other and love
the world, all the while seeking to give
reasons for the hope that we have.’ 1
“The gospel of Jesus
Christ is not just a
word; it is a living
word”
James Gustafson
Evangelism: more than
proclamation
A good place to start for our model
of evangelism is the early Church. For
them, caring for each other materially
was simply part of their demonstration
of the Gospel which they proclaimed.
Through the radically generous
relationships which the believers had
in fellowship, the Lord added to their
number daily those who were being
saved (Acts 2). Social responsibility was
pursued both on a collective level (Acts
6) and on a personal level, even for the
‘full time’ evangelists (Galatians 2:10).
They did this because they knew that a
distinctive and counter-cultural living
out of God’s love was the evangelism
that Jesus taught; that by loving one
another, ‘everyone will know that you
are my disciples’ (John 13:35), like a
light that will ‘shine before others,
that they may see your good deeds
and glorify your Father in heaven.’
(Matthew 5:16).
The gospel of love, hope and
restoration is not understood through
5

a simple process of intellectual reasoning.
Spoken proclamation in itself will rarely be
enough for it to make sense for the seeker;
trust in the credibility of the messenger, as
well the message, is needed. In other words,
our demonstrations of the distinctive love
of Christ will affect the plausibility of our
proclamation.
From the Bible’s perspective, evangelism
defined as merely the verbal expression
of the good news forms a very narrow
understanding of the term. As Gustafson
explains, ‘The gospel of Jesus Christ is not
just a word; it is a living word’. At its fullest,
it is not only ‘propositional statements’ but
‘the incarnation of the Word of God into the
cultures and lives of mankind.’ 2
Seeking social justice is part of the
demonstration of the truth and credibility
of the Gospel we proclaim. The Word is seen
to be the Living Word because it is lived out.
This isn’t to say that we can do away with
proclamation; without it our deeds are like
signposts pointing to nowhere. Instead, we
must do both together.
Application to university
context
Applying these ideas to our university context
can often be challenging. At the back of
this guide are links to some helpful online
resources. To start with, here are some general
pointers for what seeking social justice might
look like as a student today.
Advocacy
••
Political freedoms. Living in a
democracy, we are able to petition our
political leaders to use the mechanisms
of government to the advantage of
the most vulnerable. Remember, MPs
are legally obliged to respond to their
constituents’ writings.
••
Raising awareness. ‘You may choose to
look the other way but you can never
say again that you did not know.’ –
William Wilberforce.
Often inaction is simply a result of
ignorance, especially in the ‘student
bubble’, where many injustices are
hidden from sight.
Action
••
Generous giving. Even on student
budgets, we can always sacrifice in order
to give. Remember the value of even the
poor widow’s offering (Luke 21).
••
Volunteering. There are many ways to
give time usefully; foodbanks, services
for the elderly or the homeless are just
some examples.
••
Ethical lifestyles. There are lots of links
at the back of this booklet on how to
change our daily lifestyles to better
impact others. Unfortunately, our
‘inaction’ is often a form of ‘action’,
perpetuating global inequalities and
environmental harm.
••
Careers. What we dedicate our working
lives to after university is a scary but
exciting decision. How will you use it to
serve others?
Prayer
••
Encountering social injustices can
rightly be deeply troubling, but should
not paralyse us into despair and
inaction. We can draw strength from
the one who has overcome the world
(John 16:33).
••
We believe that the Bible provides
a framework for structuring right
relationships on both a personal and
societal level. Through a prayerful
reading of scripture we hope to
discern this.
1 Daniel Strange, Cinnamon Theology Symposium, 2015
2 The Integration of Development and Evangelism, James
W. Gustafson Missiology: An International Review, WJI. XXVI,
No.2, April 1998
6

Just Love
Just Love is a movement that aims to inspire
and release every Christian student to pursue
social justice through advocacy, action and
prayer. We have groups in various universities
across the country engaging with issues
such as homelessness, human trafficking and
ethical lifestyle.
We’d love you to get involved. To find out if
there’s a Just Love group at your university,
check out our website: http://www.
justloveuk.com/. If there isn’t one, why
not consider setting one up? You can get in
contact with us on Twitter @JustLove_UK or
email us at info@justloveuk.com.
Other groups
Jubilee Centre
This booklet was written by Andrew Lawrence
in conjunction with the Jubilee Centre, a social
reform charity that aims to articulate a biblical
framework for public life and equip Christian
leaders to be salt and light in a secular world.
http://www.jubilee-centre.org/
©Jubilee Centre
St Andrews House
59, St Andrews St
Cambridge CB2 3BZ
01223 566319
Here are some groups with great resources
and expertise in particular areas, do look
them up!
Tearfund Rhythms:
http://rhythms.org/
The Christian Aid Collective:
http://www.christianaidcollective.org/
International Justice Mission:
http://www.ijm.org
Christians in Politics:
http://www.christiansinpolitics.org.uk/
Christian Action, Research and Education (CARE):
http://www.care.org.uk/
Photo credits: P1 Flickr user Adrian Snood, Flickr user .craig; P2 Flickr user stevec77; P4 Flickr user Andrew Stawarz

Page 90 of 119

Attachment B
A Religious View of The Foundations
of International Law
Page 91 of 119

NELLCO
NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository
New York University Public Law and Legal Theory
Working Papers
New York University School of Law
5-1-2011
A Religious View of the Foundations of
International Law
Jeremy J. Waldron
NYU School of Law, jeremy.waldron@nyu.edu
Follow this and additional works at: http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu_plltwp
Part of the International Law Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Legal History, Theory and
Process Commons, and the Religion Law Commons
Recommended Citation
Waldron, Jeremy J., "A Religious View of the Foundations of International Law" (2011). New York University Public Law and Legal
Theory Working Papers. Paper 278.
http://lsr.nellco.org/nyu_plltwp/278
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the New York University School of Law at NELLCO Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been
accepted for inclusion in New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers by an authorized administrator of NELLCO Legal
Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact tracy.thompson@nellco.org.

The 2011 Charles E. Test Lectures at Princeton University
A RELIGIOUS VIEW OF THE
FOUNDATIONS
OF
INTERNATIONAL LAW
March 23, 28, and 30, 2011
Jeremy Waldron
University Professor and Professor of Law, New York University
Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory, All Souls College, Oxford
1

for Will Storrar
2

Lecture One: Wednesday, March 23----p. 3
THE CRISIS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE
STRICTURES OF PUBLIC REASON
Abstract: Over the last ten years there has been something of a crisis in American confidence in,
and support for, international law. As the idea of order and justice in the international realm is
considered and rationalized from various perspectives, it seems appropriate to consider also how it
might be regarded from the viewpoint of the world’s leading religions. This lecture will begin the
task of considering law beyond the state from a specifically Christian point of view, mapping
Christian ideas of peace, community, redemption, and the task of ordering a disordered world onto
the kinds of global structures that were imaginable in the first century CE and that are imaginable
today. But it will also consider the difficulties of sustaining a viewpoint of this kind in a multi-faith
and indeed increasingly secular world.
Lecture Two: Monday, March 28, 2011----p. 27
SOVEREIGNS, BORDERS, AND RESPONSIBILITY
FOR THE WORLD
Abstract: The ideas of nationhood and sovereignty are both central to and troubling for international
law. But the basis for the division of the world into separate political communities (nation-states)
remains controversial. And clearly a religious approach to order in the international realm will
endorse the position of most modern international jurists that sovereign independence is not to be
made into an idol or a fetish, and that the tasks of order and peace are not to be conceived as
optional, which sovereigns may or may not support at their pleasure. At the same time, sovereigns
have their own mission in world, ordering particular communities of men and women; and this task,
too, should not be slighted. Something similar can be said about ideals of national selfdetermination.
Though Christian commitments are not at odds with the idea of a people taking
responsibility for order in their own community, it ought to be highly suspicious of any form of
exclusive nationalism, particularly in light of what may be read as the fundamental cosmopolitanism
of the New Testament.
Lecture 3: Wednesday, March 30, 2011----p. 49
THE SOURCES OF ORDER: WHY NATURAL LAW
IS NOT ENOUGH
Abstract: It is sometimes thought that a religious view of international law will argue for natural law as a
primary basis of international order. Natural law is no doubt important in any Christian jurisprudence. But
the most telling part of natural law jurisprudence from Aquinas to Finnis has always been its insistence on
the specific human need for positive law. This holds true in the international realm as much as in any
realm of human order—perhaps more so, because in the international realm law has to do its work
unsupported by the overwhelming power of a particular state. So this final lecture will address, from a
religious point of view, the sources of law in the international realm: treaty, convention, custom,
precedent, and jurisprudence. It will focus particularly on the sanctification of treaties. Though
parchments and institutions are not the final word in human affairs, they are our best hope for peace and
justice in the meantime that is given us to order our affairs.
3

Lecture One: Wednesday, March 23, 2011
THE CRISIS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND THE
STRICTURES OF PUBLIC REASON
1. “The powers that be” and “I am a Roman citizen”
Just so there is no doubt about the perspective from which I am approaching the
subject of these lectures, I would like to begin with a story about St. Paul. Paul is
famous (among a great many other things) for his hard line on the duty owed by
Christians to “the powers that be.”
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. …Whosoever therefore
resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God…. Render therefore to all
their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to
whom fear; honour to whom honour. 1
Who are these powers to whom tribute, custom, fear and honor are due, in Paul’s
world? When we reflect on Romans 13, we think of the law of the land and the
constitutionally ordained authorities of our nation: the tribute we owe to the IRS;
the fear that we have of legal sanctions, and the honor we accord to our legislature,
our President and the courts. We think of the legal and political institutions of the
nation-state that holds power around here. Is the same true of St. Paul in the middle
of the first century of the common era? Well, not quite.
For Paul, the powers that be were mainly Roman, and these were not the
institutions of the local nation-state or its legal system, but those of a vast empire,
effectively a world government. It was to Rome that fear, custom, tribute and
honor were due, 2 and often this was at the expense of local authorities.
As in his writings, so too in Paul’s life. St. Luke tells us in The Acts of the
Apostles that when the religious authorities in Jerusalem—the Sanhedrin—were
beating Paul and preparing to kill him, and when the local soldiers sensing yet
another disturbance in the city took Paul into custody and stretched him out to flog
him, Paul cried out: “I am a Roman citizen!” This wouldn’t be the last time
someone appealed to a world authority against the exercise of local powers of
detention and interrogation. And when pursuant to this plea he was sent to
1 Romans 13: __.
2 The same is true of the famous story, repeated in three of the Gospels, about the Pharisees questioning Jesus about
whether it was lawful to pay tribute to Caesar. Matthew 22: 15-22; Mark 12: 13-17; Luke 20: 20-26.This is not just a
question about our attitude to taxes. It is a question about the attitude we should take to distant imperial authority.
When Jesus says “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” it is world government that is being vindicated
(if indeed that’s what is happening: Tom Wright has suggested a different view which has Jesus saying in effect
after noting the image on the coin, “The only thing to do with something like this is give it straight back to its pagan
owners.”) N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 506.
4

Caesarea, a local administrative center in Palestine for trial, and his adversaries
came and demanded his rendition back to Jerusalem, Paul cried again, “I am a
Roman citizen. I appeal to Caesar!” “Then Festus [the Governor], when he had
conferred with the council, answered, Hast thou appealed unto Caesar? unto Caesar
shalt thou go.” 3 And off he went. It may or may not have been a good idea. We
know that Paul encountered many dangers on his journey to Rome, the centre of
world government, and tradition has it that after some years under house arrest in
that city he was eventually put to death under Nero (not crucified, like Peter, but
beheaded as befitted a Roman citizen). Not only that, but there was some irony in
Paul’s appeal to a higher power. Agrippa II, one of the local satraps called in by
Festus to consult about the case, was so convinced by Paul’s response to his
questions that he said to the governor, “This man might have been set at liberty, if
he had not appealed unto Caesar.” But this was no longer a matter for Agrippa’s
merely kingly authority; Paul’s demand now made it a matter for world
government not for a client state or for provincial or national administration.
2. From empire to international law
My subject this afternoon, and in the two lectures that follow next week, is
“Religious Foundations of International Law,” and as my use of this story about
Paul suggests, I am going to concentrate particularly on the Christian approach to
international law. I will tell you why and how in a moment.
But you may think that the story, from the final chapters of the Acts of the
Apostles, is inapposite because it is a story about Roman law not international law,
and Roman rule—however vast and cosmopolitan it was—was not international
law. Roman imperial rule was one thing; the basis, if any of Rome’s dealings—by
way of custom or treaty or diplomacy—with other independent or, as we might
say, sovereign centers of power was another. 4 Only the latter qualifies truly as
international law, and we know little or nothing of Paul’s orientation to that.
It is a fair point, as far as it goes, although the image of international law as
dealing purely with inter-sovereign relations is less true now than it used to be;
nowadays international law also protects the rights of individuals as Roman law
protected Paul’s rights and international institutions—like the International
Criminal Court—adjudicate claims against individuals not just claims against
sovereign nations.
But it is too early in the lectures to base anything on that point. What I
mostly wanted to do by introducing this story at the beginning was to jolt us out of
the assumption that Christian attitudes towards legal authority—epitomized in the
3 Acts 25:
4 See Bederman, International Law in the Ancient World.
5

opening verses of Romans 13—are to be understood as confined in their
application to the laws of national political institutions and what the international
lawyers would call municipal legal systems. They are not, at least not in these
passages. They are oriented to much larger global institutions whose hegemony
was justified in theory and to a large extent in practice by the need to maintain
peace and do justice uniformly in the world. Roman government was world
government, to all intents and purposes.
Of course, there are all sorts of other things to say about Christian attitudes
to empire generally and to the Roman empire in particular. We know that St.
Paul’s attitude to Rome was highly ambivalent. He appealed to it, he counted on it
as a counterweight to local injustice, and he counselled submission to its authority.
But he didn’t tie up his identity with it, despite his invocation of Roman
citizenship: “For here we haven continuing city.” 5 N.T. Wright has highlighted in
his recent work a prominent strand of Paul’s teaching which is devoted specifically
to a furious denunciation of the cult of the emperor-worship, and what the empire
seemed to preach as “the divine lordship of Caesar.” And even apart from that
idolatry, there is a sense inherited by the early Christians from the prophets of
Israel that empire in general is, in Oliver O’Donovan’s words, “a bestial
deformation,” 6 and that the best that can be said for it is that historically it has been
one of God’s many ways of punishing Israel for her sins.
On the other hand, Professor O’Donovan also cites the view of Eusebius of
Caesarea who believed that it was no coincidence the incarnation took place in a
time of empire, at a time when
one universal power, the Roman Empire, arose and flourished, while the
enduring and implacable hatred of nation against nation, was now removed;
and as the knowledge of one God and one way of religion and salvation,
even the doctrine of Christ, was made known to all mankind; so at the selfsame
period the entire dominion of the Roman empire being vested in a
single sovereign, profound peace reigned throughout the world. 7
I don’t know how to navigate through all this, and I should certainly not
attempt it at this early stage. We will talk in Lecture 2 about O’Donovan’s
confrontation with this sort of Constantinianism and about his inference that the
Judaeo-Christian tradition is implacably hostile to the notion of any world
government apart from the exaltation and kingship of Jesus Christ.
5 Hebrews 13: 14.
6 O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations, p. 72.
7 Eusebius of Caesarea, Speech on the Dedication of the Holy Sepulchre Church (Laus Constantini) 16; IG, p. 58. –
quoted by O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, at 213.
6

My point about Pauls’ appeal to the pax Romana was to introduce (rather
than conclude) a conversation about Christian attitudes towards forms of law—
forms of legality and legal institutions, forms of authoritatively maintained order—
that transcend national polity, just as other theorists and theologians have begun a
conversation—no doubt also beginning with Romans 13—about modes of
community that are smaller and more local, modes of neighbourhood that are more
modest, some would say more human in scale than the over-bearing institutions of
the nation-state. 8
3. Not history
I began in the first century, but my account will not be historical. The role of
Christian thinkers in the formation of international law, in its emergence in
something like its modern form, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century is too
well-known to require rehearsal here. So: no Vitoria, no Grotius, no Gentili, no
Pufendorf; except occasionally. (Gentili will have a cameo role in Lecture 3). This
is not that sort of account. When I talk about Christian foundations of international
law, I mean foundations in the sense of normative premises: understandings and
characterizations that have to do with how we ought to regard international law and
the claims it makes on us as citizens, voters, lawyers, and perhaps also officeholders.
I want to explore the possibility of a normative jurisprudence of
international law rooted in Christian premises. So it is not a matter of tracing the
historical impact of Christian premises but looking for the actual implications of
those premises for international law for people here and now—not in the
seventeenth century Netherlands— who take those Christian premises seriously.
But if it is not an historical account, then why Christian foundations.
How—in the modern world—can that be of any more than historical interest?
International law has to work for a world of multiple faiths; how can a normative
account specific to one religion be anything other than sectarian and divisive in this
regard—pulling us apart when it the mission of international law to bring us
together? My answer will depend on some views about public reason and
overlapping consensus that I will set out in a moment. But first some history of my
own.
4. The Working Group at CTI
In September 2007, a small group of about a dozen jurists and theologians—
scholars (some American, some British and European) working in a variety of
areas (international law, legal philosophy, legal history, Christian ethics, and
8 See, for example, John Inge, A Christian Theology of Place (Ashgate, 2003), esp. Ch. 5, quoting Alasdair
Macintyre, Wendell Berry, Daniel Kemmis etc.
7

systematic theology)—began meeting in Princeton, under the joint chairmanship of
me and Professor Robin Lovin, Dean of Southern Methodist University's Perkins
School of Theology. 9 Our group was convened by William Storrar with the
resources and institutional facilities of Princeton’s Center for Theological Inquiry
(CTI).
The motivation for the group arose out of discussions at the seminary in
January, 2006 about a response by concerned Christians to issues of torture and
detainee abuse by American authorities. 10 Something called the National Religious
Campaign against Torture was launched during that conference, under the
leadership of George Hunsinger, Professor of Theology at the seminary. It remains
an active and important organization.
At that January meeting, a number of us were brought together by Will
Storrar, Director of the CTI to explore some shared concern about what we saw as
a crisis in the perceived legitimacy in America of international law generally,
which was making it difficult for international norms—such as the Geneva
Conventions and the UN Convention against Torture—to play their proper part in
the debates that were wracking the United States about the appropriate treatment of
detainees in the war against terrorism. Many political leaders, some legal scholars,
and a large portion of the American population seemed to be dismissive of
international norms and believed that the matter should be determined, either by
American constitutional and military law or directly on the basis of homeland
security policy. The notion that the treatment of detainees should be addressed
within a wider framework of legal obligation was not one that found favor with
opinion leaders in the community. We wondered why that was and what could be
done about this—in general, and not just in regard to this most morally compelling
of issues. So, while a number of us remained active on the torture issue—me in the
writings and lectures (brought together in my 2010 book Torture, Terror and
Trade-offs), 11 Mary-Ellen O’Connell in her firm and unyielding restatement of the
9 The members of the group were Roger Alford (Pepperdine University: Law), Nick Grief (Bournemouth University,
U.K.: Law), David Gushee (Mercer University: Christian Ethics), David Hollenbach (Boston College: Theology),
Robin Lovin (Southern Methodist University: Theology), Mary Ellen O’Connell (Notre Dame: Law), Amanda
Perreau-Saussine (Cambridge University, U.K.: Law). Esther Reed (University of Exeter, U.K.: Theology), Will
Storrar (Center for Theological Inquiry, Princeton), Christiane Tietz (Mainz, Germany:Theology), and Jeremy
Waldron (New York University: Law and Philosophy).
10 “Theology, International Law and Torture: A Conference on Human Rights and Religious Commitment,” which
was held on January 13-16, 2006 at the Princeton Theological Seminary
11 Jeremy Waldron, “Torture and Positive Law: Jurisprudence for the White House,” 105 Columbia Law Review
(2005) and “What Can Christian Teaching Add to the Debate about Torture?” 63 Theology Today (2006) reprinted
in Torture, Terror and Trade-Offs; Philosophy for the White House (Oxford University Press, 2010)
8

law on the matter as a leading scholar of international law, 12 and David Gushee of
Mercer University in his leadership work in producing An Evangelical Declaration
Against Torture, and securing its acceptance by the National Association of
Evangelicals 13 —we dedicated some discussion to more basic and background
questions about international order and the normativity and legitimacy of
international law. We felt it important not to concentrate just on the substance of
the violations (torture and detainee abuse)—of which of course any nation should
be ashamed—but also on the damage being done, recklessly or deliberately, to the
fabric of international law itself.
Back in the legal academy, we heard reputable scholars—Jack Goldsmith
and Eric Posner, for example—arguing that international law “can exert no moral
force comparable to the moral force of domestic law.” 14 Of course they were not
arguing on religious grounds: they are realists in international relations and legal
realists, I think, in their attitude towards the claims of law. Interestingly their
statement suggests that they think domestic law has moral authority. A lot of
Christians will agree with them on that—and they will often cite St. Paul’s Letter
to the Romans if biblical authority is required. So should Christian scholars follow
Goldsmith and Posner in privileging law at the domestic level and denying
legitimacy to international law? Should we accept that the considerations that give
national law its moral standing in the eyes of Christians do not give any equivalent
standing to international legal norms and institutions?
Or does international law also have moral standing in its own right as one of
the powers that be, ordained by God or ordained by men in response to God’s
commandments to do justice, seek peace, and generally order the world? And if it
does, how should we as Christians think about some of the distinctive features of
this ordering: the absence of a coercive world state that can be, in Paul’s words, “a
terror to wrongdoers”; the distinctive sources of international law in treaty and
custom; its Faustian pact with the sovereignty of the nation-state; and its
conservative attitude towards borders, the residue of history, and existing
distributions of power?
Theology has never neglected law. The understanding of law in the natural
law tradition and the Pauline consecration of “the powers that be” mean that a rich
jurisprudential tradition has developed within Christian theology from Augustine
to Niebuhr and Finnis. But international law has been much less thought about in
12 Mary Ellen O'Connell, “Affirming the Ban on Harsh Interrogation,” Ohio State Law Journal, Vol. 66, p. 1231,
2005.
13 An Evangelical Declaration against Torture: Human Rights in an Age of Terror, March 2007, available at
http://www.nae.net/government-affairs/endorsed-documents/409-an-evangelical-declaration-against-tortureprotecting-human-rights-in-an-age-of-terror
14 See Jack Goldsmith & Eric Posner, The Limits of International Law (2005) at 199.
9

the tradition of Christian theology, and the neglect of this subject in religious
circles has left Christian theologians somewhat tongue-tied so far as any response
to the present crisis of international law is concerned. There are exceptions. I have
already mentioned the work of Oliver O’Donovan, and I hope those who know his
writing will recognize despite some disagreements my great debt to the luminous
and mostly compelling argument of the “International Judgment” chapter, the 12 th
chapter, of his 2005 book, The Ways of Judgment. 15 I have learned much from him
and a number of O’Donovanian positions will be apparent in what I say a little
later today. But mostly international law has not been a preoccupation of those
Christian writers who address law and politics. 16 There is a powerful Christian
movement concerned with peace 17 and of course a strong and articulate Christian
commitment to human rights. But these are oriented to an understanding of what
we might call the substantive goals. What we wanted to consider was the form and
character of international legality itself.
These lectures are among the first-fruits of the International Law Working
Group. However, please remember that what you are hearing in these lectures is
my own analysis, one view of the cathedral, informed by our discussions, but not
to be attributed necessarily to the group. In a number of areas I will take up
positions that I know are not shared by some of my brothers and sisters who have
met over the years at the Center for Theological Inquiry. In various places, I will
make these disagreements explicit.
5. Why Christian, not ecumenical?
Our group comprised people from a variety of Christian denominations (Anglican,
Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist). But there were no members of Jewish,
Islamic or other religious communities outside the Christian family. Why was
this? We thought long and hard about it. It was not supposed to convey any
denigration of ecumenical conversations about international law. We shared the
view of one of our leaders, Robin Lovin, that the conclusions we reach when we
think together about these questions as Christians must eventually become part of a
larger discussion. 18 Inter-faith conversation, important on all topics of religious
and public concern, is of course essential on issues of international law (where we
are talking about ordering a world that comprises a dazzling array of faiths).
15 This is not to mention the sections on “Yhwh reigns” and “King over the whole earth” in his earlier book, The
Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 30-73.
16 Refer to Mark Janis (ed.) Religion and International Law, and also to Jean Porter, Ministers of Law.
17 I heartily recommend Willard Swartley’s book, Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament
Theology and Ethics
18 Lovin, Christian Ethics, Kindle Loc. 1680.
10

Nevertheless we thought it necessary to proceed as a Christian working
group for the time being. A search for consensus among faiths on the question of
international law will be futile unless each party brings to the table a clear sense of
its own doctrinal commitments. Christians, Jews, and Muslim each need to get
clear about their own conception of the foundations of international law, not to preempt
ecumenical discussion but as one of its preconditions. We hope that our
matched by the work of similarly constituted groups of Muslim and Jewish
scholars is important, and Dr. Storrar has been exploring various possibilities in
this regard. But a premature search for consensus might sell short the contribution
that each can make. Since there are ideas about world order in the religious
tradition of Judaism and certainly in the Islamic tradition that are quite strikingly
different from ours, it would be as well to get straight about Christian ideas first
before we bring them into relation with either doctrines of the in-gathering of the
nations “with the people of the God of Abraham” 19 or the doctrine of an
irreconcilable asymmetry between relations within the House of Islam and
relations within the domain of war.
6. Public reason.
But why religious foundations of any sort? How can we talk at all about Christian
foundations of international law given that we share the world with billions of non-
Christians? Even if we are talking about America’s attitude to international law,
we have to accept that the community we are addressing contains members of all
faiths and members of none. Isn’t it—as John Rawls has argued 20 —inappropriate
to think of developing a public reason for community of this sort in terms of the
creed, teaching, and scriptures of just one religious tradition?
We could see no way round this. We did not accept the position of Rawls
and other political liberals that it is inappropriate for contributions to public debate
to be founded on religious principles. People have a responsibility to think things
through as hard and as deeply as they can and to communicate their thinking to
others—if only so that others know the lie of the land and understand something of
their fellow citizens’ ultimate commitments. Should non-Christian citizens be
under any illusion about Christianity’s view of global legality, given that its
position for us does have to be settled—democratically—in a polity that comprises
hundreds of millions of Christians? Analogously, would it make sense for
believers in a mainly Muslim society to remain silent on this matter, so that their
attitude to international law remained a mystery to their non-Muslim fellow
19 Psalm 47: 9; but cf. ibid, verses 2-3: “For the Lord Most High is awesome; He is a great King over all the earth.
He will subdue the peoples under us, and the nations under our feet.”
20 Rawls, Political Liberalism, on public reason.
11

citizens? Either way, if our faith has a bearing on this issue, we cannot confine it
(in Robin Lovin’s words) to church and the family dinner table. 21 We have to know
our own bearings, and it has to be known where we stand. The duty to bear
witness is not only a religious one but a civic one as well.
I am firmly of the view that in public debate each person should call it as he
sees it and make the utmost effort to convey both the depth and the detail of his
position to others while straining at the same time as hard as he can to apprehend
the depth and the detail of the positions others are putting forward. As Jürgen
Habermas has recent argued, mutual intelligibility in public debate is a two way
process: religious citizens must try to make their doctrines intelligible; but also
“secular citizens must open their minds to the possible truth content of these
presentations and enter into dialogues” from which mutual enrichment of belief
might be a possibility. 22
I cannot emphasize too strongly that it is not our claim that international law
can only have Christian foundations, and we are certainly not proposing that the
world should revert to something like the idea of Christendom, the idea of a
specifically Christian society of states, analogous to the dar al-Islam. 23
International law needs to be a shared enterprise, among all the peoples of the
world. But the commitment to it among the peoples of the earth needs to be deep,
not shallow, an overlapping consensus anchored for each faith, for each
philosophy, for each civilization, and if necessary for each national tradition, in the
bowels and innards of its deepest commitments. There cannot be an overlapping
consensus unless there are articulate traditions to overlap; and so there cannot be
an overlapping consensus on international law unless each tradition is articulate
about—and can assure others of—its own attitudes on the matter. 24
21 As Christians in a democratic society, we have to bring our Christianity to bear on these issues—even if we would
prefer to live out our faith in the narrower confines of church and family. Lovin, Christian Ethics, Ch. VI.
22 Habermas, “Religion in the Public Sphere,” 14 European Journal of Philosophy 1 (2006), at 11. See also
Waldron, “Two-Way Translation: The Ethics of Engaging with Religious Contributions in Public Deliberation,”
available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1708113
23 Cf. O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 195
24 Beyond that, it was our view that Christians and indeed all people of faith have a responsibility to bear witness
and participate in public debate, on matters of national and international importance. And it is not irresponsible—or,
as Rawls thinks, disrespectful of others—to advance specifically religious claims in public life. There might be
insights regarding international law available within the Christian tradition which are not accessible on a purely
secular basis. And it is important to be open to the possibility that the authority of law (and of international law)
requires transcendent foundations, and that a purely pragmatic account of law’s authority in this realm may be
inadequate. But I say again that nothing in these lectures assumes that Christian insights are indispensable. All I
assume is that there is a distinctive Christian attitude towards international law and that this is something of interest
to Christians themselves (who may not have thought these matters through), of interest to their fellow-citizens of
other faiths or none (so that they are under no misapprehension about how the land lies), and of potential interest to
everyone with whom we share the world.
12

Not only that, but each faith must articulate its own views on these matters
of public reason and overlapping consensus. The lofty abstractions and the fifteen
word vocabulary, purged of all color and content, with which the Rawlsians
approach these matters is neither canonical nor neutral nor Archimedean. We
approach even this issue of how we can share structure and order in the midst of
diversity, each from our own perspective.
7. Christianity especially
What might a distinctively Christian view of international law involve? In his 1854
Hulsean prize essay from Cambridge on “The Influence of Christianity upon
International Law,” Charles Malcolm Kennedy made the following observation:
No belief contains such enlarged views in regard to the different nations of
the earth as the Christian Faith; in fact, the catholic spirit and enlarged
benevolence which pervade the Christian Religion, and which particularly
distinguish it from the erroneous Beliefs prevailing in many parts of the
globe, afford one of the most convincing proofs that it proceeds from Him
who created and preserves this world and all its inhabitants. 25
Kennedy’s evidence was scriptural. He said:
The universal nature of Christ's kingdom is expressly stated in many
passages; as also that all nations are of one blood and kindred. Christians
are enjoined to render good to all; to love their enemies; to do unto others as
they would have others do unto them; and to love their neighbours as
themselves; the word "neighbour" being shown to be employed in its widest
signification. 26
In all these respects, Kennedy concluded, “the tendency of the Christian Faith is to
unite all nations in friendship with one another.” 27
Similar themes could be multiplied. Though Christian teaching originated In
Galilee, on the eastern margins of the Roman Empire, its founder instructed his
disciples to go and preach the good news to the whole world and—as I said at the
beginning—its earliest practitioners appeared to rely on the structures of law and
governance (the pax Romana) which made possible the travel, the preaching, and
the communications—the epistles!—that this vocation presupposed.
Moreover, not only did Christian doctrine commit its followers to
universalism and to a cosmopolitan neighborliness of people of every background,
25 Charles Malcolm Kennedy “The Influence of Christianity upon International Law,” pp. 1-2
26 Ibid., p.2
27 Idem.
13

it also inherited and transformed a doctrine of the in-gathering of the nations of the
earth into a single community—beginning with the prophecy of Isaiah that “the
Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains … exalted above the
hills; and all nations shall flow unto it” 28 and ending with the apocalyptic vision of
St. John
After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number,
of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the
throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their
hands; and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which
sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. 29
It is possible, in other words, that Christianity, with its explicit commitment to the
opening up of a redemptive promise to all nations, can find within that mission a
distinctively valuable understanding of the notion of international community.
Before we get too carried away with this, however, we need to remind
ourselves of the otherworldliness of these Christian ideals. The vision of the
community of all nations is apocalyptic: it is a feature of the last days, not the here
and now. The vision of God’s judgment of the nations at the end of Matthew 25 is
transcendent and has an assurance and finality that no human institution can match.
Even the idea of peace, which, as Willard Swartley has shown, pervades the
teaching of the New Testament, 30 sometimes seems to be little more than a
homynym of the aim that pervades our international law. Through the Charter of
the United Nations, we look for peace in the negative sense of saving “succeeding
generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought
untold sorrow to mankind.” 31 But Christians are taught that safety here on earth is
not the be-all and end-all, that those who chant “peace and security,” may face
sudden destruction, 32 and that the peace we should look for is not necessarily peace
as the world understands it.
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth,
give I unto you. … [T]he time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think
that he doeth God service. …These things I have spoken unto you, that in
28 Isaiah 2:2
29 Revelation 7:9-10
30 Swartley, Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology and Ethics.
31 UN Charter, Preamble.
32 1 Thessalonians 5: 2-3.
14

me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of
good cheer; I have overcome the world. 33
Talk of the Christian foundations of international law can easily become shallow if
we look simply for terms and passages in scripture that remind us of the text of
legal principles.
There is a deeper sense, too, in which a Christian consideration of the
foundations of international law must proceed with caution. The idea of
international law invites us to reflect upon the possibility of governance at a global
level, the governing of the world. And Christians do have their own image of this:
their doctrine of the kingdom of God—“a unified world community under God’s
rule.” 34 This is not a conception we should ever lose sight of. On the other hand,
there is surely millennial arrogance in any suggestion that the international order
that is being constructed in the world out of human law and human institutions is
an approximation to that divine kingdom. I have found Professor O’Donovan’s
observations on this particularly helpful in their insistence that it is not for us in our
thinking about international law to anticipate Christ’s kingdom on earth. “Properly
understood,” he argues, the kingdom of God in the world is “a theological and
eschatological” idea, with Christ exalted “far above all principality and power and
might and dominion.” 35 But our tasks, says O’Donovan, “are more modest, though
no less compelling.”
International authority is not itself an object of faith nor a matter of
prophecy…. It is a simple assistance in ordering the agreements and
conflicts of peoples, the disasters, the fears and the achievements, the wars
and rumors of wars, within a framework of human lawfulness 36
—organized here on earth among us, not exalted far above us.
It is the function of the international order to create a human framework of
human lawfulness within which human action “may be responsible and
coordinated.” 37 Ordering the world, sorting out conflict and incoherence;
coordinating us and orienting us clearheadedly to the achievement of basic human
goods—the call for this sort of order may be a God-given task, but it is a human
enterprise that is called for—with all the frailty that that involves—and the
authority and laws that can perform these tasks will be human institutions and
33 John 14: 27 and 16: 2 and 33. And consider also Christ’s hard saying, “Think not that I am come to send peace on
earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34)
34 O’Donovan, Ways of Judgment, 201 (or 210)
35 Ephesians 1: 21.
36 Ibid., 227
37 Ibid., 218
15

human laws—treaties, customs, earth-bound entities—not human perceptions of
God’s laws or at least not directly. I will spend time on this in my third lecture,
which is entitled “Why Natural Law is Not Enough.” Suffice for the moment to
say that I am a sort of Christian positivist. Our task is to make positive law that
can do human work in the midst of human problems, not to anticipate God’s
judgments or His rule upon earth, which we will experience in its glory soon
enough.
One way of driving this point home is to emphasize that many of the
activities to which law brings orders are in fact forms of human sinfulness. I don’t
just mean that law condemns sinfulness. Nor do I just mean that law has to
respond to man-made evils as well as natural evils. I mean international law
actually also regulates sinful conduct and provides a framework for it. Think of
the laws and customs of armed conflict—particularly ius in bello—which instruct
wicked men (among others) how exactly they should proceed in their wickedness.
It is as though law gave instructions to murderers: practise your homicidal activity
in this way rather than that. I am not condemning this. International law brings
some order in the midst of anger, violence and death, but sometimes it is just a way
of ordering anger, violence and death, not as God’s rule would have it, abolishing
anger, violence and death altogether.
I don’t know that I want to go as far as O’Donovan in his warning, in regard
to any exaltation of international law, that the reign of the Antichrist, too, is
perfectly expressed the idea of world-rule. 38 But O’Donovan is right to emphasize
that, like all politics, international law can go badly wrong, and it probably will go
badly wrong if it is associated with millennial hubris. In some areas, the best it can
be is a shabby human response to human shabbiness, 39 and it is as important for
that point to be driven home to its dewy-eyed proponents as it is for the cynical
critics of international law to bear it in mind when they reproach us with the
shortcomings of international institutions.
9. Modest tasks of international order
We should think of the tasks of international law, therefore, as modest, not
apocalyptic. It is not our job to usher in the new Jerusalem. True, the international
community has to respond to apocalyptic crisis: to war, famine, mass murder,
earthquake, tsunamis—disasters, as we sometimes say, of biblical proportions. But
the responses are, and have to be, human—sometimes all-too-human in character.
38 O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 236
39 Cf. Montesquieu on a science of human shabbiness. “As an intelligent being, he incessantly transgresses the laws
established by God” (On the Spirit of the Laws, I.1) – political science is the study of the history and structures of
these transgressions
16

They are hesitant, ambivalent, formalistic, even legalistic in a bad sense: so that
people sometimes say they wish that international action were less a matter of law,
more a matter of compassion or at any rate more morally decisive. (The perhaps
fatal hesitations that characterized our recent response to events unfolding in Libya
attest to this, not least to a certain legalistic recoil born of shame-faced awareness
of the unlawfulness of earlier action that was taken against a tyrant in Iraq.)
We are conscious of great global evils that require human cooperation to
avert, mitigate, or redress. But I want to emphasize that the importance of
international law is not just a function of the importance of addressing these evils;
it also turns on our awareness of the various means by which these evils might be
averted or remedied, and the particular place of law among those means. Not
everything good about human compassion and cooperation in the international
realm is legal in character; 40 by which I don’t mean that some good things are
unlawful, but many good things have little or nothing to do with law either way.
With regard to war for example, law can mitigate its horrors a bit. But the most
important efforts that go into the maintenance of peace are diplomatic, and here
law plays at most a background frame-working role. 41
Or consider international aid and relief efforts, in regard to famine, flood,
earthquake and tsunami. Like international NGOs and national governments,
Christian organizations are already involved in front-line relief efforts all over the
world. But again the importance of this work is not determinative of our attitude
towards international law (except, again, insofar as such efforts presupposes a legal
framework for travel, communications, and access).
I believe—and, under the leadership of Robin Lovin, it was one of the early
conclusions of our group—that the tasks of international law must be understood
primarily under the rubric of order, not just under the rubric of humanitarian
concern. I don’t mean that to sound formalistic: but I do mean to say that
humanitarian engagement needs the background of legal order and when one is
writing and talking specifically about religious foundations of international law it
is that order that we must focus on, rather than the more dramatic and evident good
that can be done by Christian medical aid or Christian famine relief. We mustn’t
try to brow-beat people into supporting the claims of global legality simply by
40 Christians are no doubt aware of Jesus’ own explicit teachings in the Sermon on the Mount of the importance of
pursuing love of neighbour and indeed love of enemies specifically without recourse to law.) Matthew 5: 40. Also
Delahunty, p. 43: “the invocation of law in international affairs can intensify a sense of grievance, embitter a
quarrel, and tend to cause rather than to quiet hostilities:”
41 Cf. Delahunty, p. 45-6: “the conduct of diplomacy is undergirded by international law: without the protections
accorded to it by international law, the practice of diplomacy would become far more problematic.” I shall say more
about diplomacy in Lecture 3.
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showing that international aid and cooperation are often urgently necessary. A
case for foreign aid is not yet a case for international law.
I know some Christians will say that if we have to choose between according
priority to the claims of compassionate action and according priority to the claims
of law we should choose the former. “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of
the law.” 42 Paul’s antinomianism is never far from the surface. 43 I don’t mean to
take sides on this, nor on the question of whether Paul exhibited a general
antinomianism or whether it was purely directed to certain issues raised by the Law
of Moses. What I do mean is that international law is one thing among others that
work for good in the international realm, and if we seek to justify it with Christian
premises we must seek to justify it in its specificity.
Let me run this strand out even more provocatively. A Christian view of the
world pays special attention to the cry of those who are wronged—the victims of
murder, oppression, torture, confinement, and so on. And the urgency of that
duty—our duty to minister to those who are in this sense the least of these our
brethren—it might seem to be a compelling reason for Christian people to throw in
their lot with the lawyers, in particular the international human rights lawyers. 44
But the work of international law in this regard is not just a matter of protection,
remedy, or intervention. The primary work of international law in this area is
laying down authoritative standards for nations and organizations to follow in their
treatment of those committed to their care. The standards are laid down and as a
result certain things become unthinkable, certain ways of life are just structured
and sustained: we have rights-affirming communities all over the world. That is the
primary work of law: the articulation of human rights standards that can become
part of the air we breathe in ordinary modern democracies and part of what it is to
aspire to social and political normality in societies that are on the path to
democracy.
Some philosophers and human rights scholars—John Rawls and Joseph Raz
are two examples—have argued that the primary meaning of calling something a
human right is to say that, if it is violated, war or intervention is justified and the
claims of sovereignty that would normally stand against intervention are
displaced. 45 But that is over-dramatic. Calling something a human right means
that it ought to regulate everyday social and political life in all human societies—
so that certain things, like free speech or freedom of worship can be taken for
42 Galatians 3:13
43 Cite to JW, “Dead to the Law: Paul’s Antinomianism,” 28 Cardozo Law Review (2006), 301-332
44 We are told that the nations of the earth will answer for their fulfilment or neglect of this duty when the Son of
Man comes in all his glory -- Matthew 25: 31-46.
45 Rawls, The Law of Peoples and Raz, recent paper e.g. in Besson volume.
18

granted and other things—like torture or the use of death squads—can become
unthinkable. That is what it is for rights to order the world. Certainly it is
important that we do something about violations of these norms; but the urgency of
that is not in itself the urgency of establishing human rights law. Moreover, if, in
this field of human rights, international law is identified solely with humanitarian
intervention and the punishment of violators by ad hoc tribunals or by the ICC,
then we will have to admit that it presents a sorry spectacle of limitation and
failure. But its deeper and more pervasive contribution—prior to dealing with
miscreants—is the articulation of shared standards that then normalize themselves
in legal and constitutional practice—ordering the world, not racing around like a
fire-fighter to put out conflagrations.
So: that is part of what I meant when I said that the tasks of international law
are modest and mundane. They are modest and mundane in two other respects as
well.
One is a point that, in my view, cannot bear repeating enough. Though we
all love talking about the exciting topics—humanitarian intervention, war crimes
trials, and so on—we should remember that international law does much of its
most important work in simply framing and providing for dense networks of
ordinary economic cooperation and other forms of cooperation in the world, in
areas like trade, travel, migration, and communications. International law includes
exciting things like the ius cogens condemnation of torture. But it also includes
civil aviation conventions and navigation standards, postal conventions,
arrangements for intercontinental cables and satellites, rules about passports, rules
about sea lanes, canals and railroad bridges, transnational banking arrangements,
weights and measures, time zones, and international trade and tariffs.
We should not underestimate the importance of this mundane but
indispensable dimension of international order—what I have called elsewhere “the
dense thicket of rules that sustain our life together … not just in any particular
society but generally on the face of the earth.” 46 We should not underestimate it,
first, because it enables us to see how international law operates affirmatively to
promote public goods as well as responding to great evils. And secondly, we
should not underestimate this aspect of business as usual, because it may make us a
little more optimistic the prospects for international law. Countries like the United
States, which may seem to have put themselves beyond the pale in regard to some
provisions about water-boarding, may nevertheless disclose themselves as
international law’s most faithful adherents when it comes to the thousands of legal
obligations that they discharge in the world every day, without fuss, in every aspect
of global life.
46 Jeremy Waldron, “Cosmopolitan Norms,” in Seyla Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism, pp. 83-4.
19

10. The duty to order the world
I have said that a Christian should understand the importance of international law
in terms of our duty to order the world, bringing to the chaos of action and impulse
coherence and clear-headed orientation to important human goods. 47 I believe that
the ordered framework that international law provides is indispensable, by
promulgating, as it does, as points of public global orientation, norms about how
prisoners of war are to be treated, what the rules about neutrality require, and what
is to happen at national borders, what labor standards are to be upheld, and how
environmental catastrophe is to be averted. We are not necessarily good at doing
these things, but they have to be done and, unless it can be shown that international
law and international institutions will make things much much worse than they are
rather than somewhat better, then we have an obligation to try. We mustn’t let
disappointment that they don’t make things a thousand times better motivate a
refusal to look for any amelioration at all.
There used to be a tradition in political philosophy that presented the tasks of
government as optional. People if they liked could form a social contract and set
up a government. This, as John Locke put it, “any number of men may do,
because it injures not the freedom of the rest; they are left as they were in the
liberty of the state of nature.” 48 Governance was based on consent, a social
contract, and like any contract it was a matter of choice: you could take it or leave
it. Well, like Nietzsche in The Genealogy of Morals, I believe this fantasy has been
done away with. 49
Governance—the ordering of a community, a land, or a people—is not an
option. It is a moral necessity. And it is not an enterprise from which we are
entitled to stand aloof because it is not convenient to us to enter into a social
contract. As Rawls insisted in A Theory of Justice, we have a natural duty to play
our part in the setting up, the maintenance, and the operation of just institutions;
we have an unconditional duty to play our part in making it possible for the
47 Ordering the world is partly a matter of ordering ourselves, ordering our communities, and ordering the effects we
have on each other—if you like, the externalities we impose on each other. It is a matter of bringing order to anger
and conflict as well as an order of humility to our spiritual vanity and our moral self-righteousness. Not all of this is
a task for law. Some of the order in our lives is brought there by prayer, worship, friendship and love and the sober
self-scrutiny and reconciliation at a personal level. Some of it is the upshot of forms of community among us—often
world-wide community—that have little or nothing to do with law. The international community of scholars, the
international community of scientists, the literary world, the world of entertainment, and of course the churches,
most of which now have a global dimension. Law does little of this work, except provide a framework within which
other forms of human community are enabled to act across time and across continents.
48 Locke, Second Treatise, §95.
49 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, ii, §17: I believe that fantasy has been done away with which sees the
beginning of the state in a “contract.”
20

communities we inhabit to be governed; 50 and this rather than any fiction of
consent is the basis of our obligations to positive law and political institutions.
This is the truth in the passage from the Epistle to the Romans with which we
began. The work of John Rawls, and before him Immanuel Kant, in emphasizing
this is of the utmost importance in political philosophy—and so is more recent
work along the same lines by John Finnis in Natural Law and Natural Rights.
In Rawls’s account, the idea of a natural duty to govern and be governed is
presented—and it is presented quite briefly in A Theory of Justice—solely with
reference to national-level political institutions. I don’t think there is anything
much on this in The Law of Peoples. But Kant makes it clear that the duty to move
into a situation regulated by positive law applies as much at the level of states
moving to an international order as it does to individuals moving out of the state of
nature. 51 The duty to create and participate in legal order is inescapable, and there
is no respectable moral position from which it may be regarded as an option, to be
taken or left at the whim of national policy.
11. Realist scepticism about international law
At the beginning of my remarks today I mentioned a perceived crisis in
international law as one of things that impelled the formation of the CTI working
group on theology and international law. Many legal scholars in the United States
are dismissive of international norms; they believe that the security problems that
international norms address—like going to war, like the killing of civilians, and the
treatment of detainees in the war against terrorism—should be approached on the
basis of national policy and the national interest, and if our activity in the world is
to be constrained by law at all (which some of them doubt) it should be constrained
by American constitutional law not by a set of international norms imposed on us
from Geneva.
50 Rawls, TJ on natural duty; JW, on “Special Ties and Natural Duty” paper
51 On Kant’s view, the mere coexistence of nations in a state of nature—like the mere coexistence of individuals in
a state of nature—is wrong and demands remedy: “Each of them, may and should for the sake of its own security
demand that the others enter with it into a constitution similar to the civil constitution, for under such a constitution
each can be secure in his right. This would be a league of nations.” --though, as Kant hastens to add (this is all from
the “Second Definitive Article for Perpetual Peace”), “it would not have to be a state consisting of nations.” The
only difference, he says, is that it is not appropriate to force states into a juridical condition, “for as states they
already have [law] and have thus outgrown compulsion from others to submit to a more extended lawful
constitution.” But still entering into the basis of some sort of public global order is an obligation, and an obligation
that one would have thought states would be anxious to fulfil, not wanting to be seen as lawless in their sovereign
freedom. But instead, Kant laments, “each state places its majesty in being subject to no external juridical restraint,”
embracing its failure to play its part in the ordering of the world as a badge of sovereign pride. Go figure. What a
way to think about public order!
21

There is an emerging body of work—quite highly respected in certain
circles—of which Eric Posner’s 2009 book, The Perils of Global Legalism is a
most prominent example, 52 which approaches international law through the lens of
rational choice theory and finds it wanting. (I mean rational choice theory
operating now upon the asserted self-interest of individual states rather than the
self-interest of individuals) The work is not altogether dismissive of international
law, but it is highly sceptical at the point where it strives to operate as a constraint
on national interest. Posner is sceptical about any claims of global legality that do
not reflect a politically effective and explicit apprehension of a nation-state’s selfinterest
at a given time.
I use that convoluted formula—“the politically effective and explicit
apprehension of a nation interest at a given time”—to furnish some non-trivial
content to what might otherwise be read as a tautology. For we all know of
supposedly hard-nosed philosophers who attribute every action to self-interest in
some shape or form simply because the action is done willingly and on the basis of
some reasons that presumably appealed to the agent. We want to avoid the
situation—all too common in discussions of this kind—in which self-styled realists
equivocate between this tautological definition of self-interest and narrower more
troubling versions that they are trying to bamboozle us into accepting. And
moreover, although a Christian vision of international law will have no difficulty
with the idea that states have a straightforward duty to play their part in the
ordering of the world—Christians have no problem with deontology—still one
way of characterizing our relation or states’ relations to the need for order is that an
ordered world is ultimately in everyone’s interest if interest is conceived broadly
enough. (I have in mind Niebuhr’s insistence in Moral Man, Immoral Society, that
the “ultimate interests” of states are usually best promoted rather than, in the long
run offset, by acting fairly and lawfully in their dealings with their neighbors.) 53
That is why I want to use a more specific formula to characterize the scepticism of
scholars like Eric Posner.
Posner is telling us about the clash between global legalism and an avowed,
explicit, and politically effective account of a state’s own interest, conceived as
something that may in principle oppose itself to the interests of other states or to
transcendent moral and political values. He asserts that international law has no
52 Eric Posner, The Perils of Global Legalism (University Of Chicago Press, 2009).
53 Niebuhr, Moral Man, Immoral Society, p. 86. See also: Reinhold Niebuhr: Theologian of Public Life (Making of
Modern Theology) (Larry Rasmussen) Loc. 1844-46 : “[A] consistent self-interest on the part of a nation will work
against its interests because it will fail to do justice to the broader and longer interests, which are involved with the
interests of other nations. A narrow national loyalty on our part, for instance, will obscure our long range interests
where they are involved with those of a whole alliance of free nations.”
22

claim on us and no efficacy among us, save to the extent that it is identified as
serving national self-interest conceived in this narrow way.
The claim is mainly descriptive: international law has in fact no grip on
states except pursuant to a cost-benefit calculation of national interest. But in a
way it is normative too, although the normatively-flavoured claim can vary:
sometimes what is said is that states should act on the basis of narrow self-interest,
that it is unreasonable to expect them to do otherwise, that it makes no sense for
states to abide by international law when it is not in their interest to do so;
sometimes the claims is simply the denigration of any demand that they ought to
submit to international law as fatuous and utopian; sometimes what is said is that
the weak (and their apologists among us) should stop complaining about the
actions of the strong because they know as well as we do what happens in the real
world where, as the Athenians said to the Melians, the strong do what they can and
the weak suffer what they must. 54
The thesis that states always follow narrow self-interest and that it is
unreasonable to expect them to do otherwise may be more or less plausible in
various areas of foreign and national policy—in trade policy, immigration policy,
military alliances, and international aid, for example. But in the domain that we are
concerned with, it is made plausible by a number of acknowledged features of
international legal arrangements. First, most international law obligations are selfassumed,
through bilateral or multilateral treaties. Secondly, there is (or there has
been until recently) in the international law, no court with compulsory jurisdiction.
Thirdly, there is no over-arching coercive organisation—analogous to a
government or the executive force in a state to compel states to subordinate
national interest to the common good. And fourthly, such enforcement as there is
in the international realm is itself the product of voluntary uncoerced decisions of
some members of the international community to act against others perceived as
law-breakers. These are among the considerations that have convinced thinkers
like Posner that “compliance with international law must be in the rational selfinterest
of governments, or of the individuals and groups that compel governments
to act.” Everything seems to be conditioned on the voluntary actions of national
sovereigns. These features of international law seem to indicate that, as it presently
conceived by the more modest among its adherents, international law is inherently
hospitable to the national selfishness that Posner celebrates.
Of these considerations, the point about treaties is the one that people most
often focus on. Opponents of the rational choice approach—including Christian
opponents and some members of our Working Group—respond to it by
emphasizing that international law is more than just treaty obligations; and they
54 Thucydides cite.
23

place great emphasis on ius cogens norms, for example. I shall have something
about ius cogens norms in Lecture 3. But the skepticism about treaties should be
faced head-on.
First, the fact that treaties are entered into—signed and ratified—voluntarily
does not so far show that they are artifacts of self-interest in the non-tautological
sense. All it means is that states sign treaties for reasons, but those reasons may
include moral reasons—the kind of reasons that would naturally be present in a
decision to sign on, for example to the Convention against Torture or the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. You may say the main
reason is reputational. But again this sails steadfastly into the shallows of
triviality. A reputational reason for signing on to a covenant like this—the desire to
present oneself in the world as a player of a certain respectable sort—has force
only because the moral reasons are widely accepted. In a world composed only of
what we now call rogue states, voluntarily accepting the convention against torture
would simply confirm one’s reputation for foolishness.
In any case, whatever a state’s reason for signing and ratifying a treaty—and
I think the reason is often (though perhaps implicitly) exactly the desire for a more
ordered world—whatever the reason for undertaking a treaty obligation, what one
undertakes is an obligation, something which, even if it is adopted for reasons of
self-interest, is expected to constrain self-interest in the future. Legal demands may
arise out of voluntary commitments but (like all covenants) those commitments
bind us even when later generations of statesmen wish they could be repudiated. 55
The normal situation involves a dilution over time of the enthusiasm with which a
treaty obligation was undertaken: the U.S. was in the forefront of negotiating the
initial Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of prisoners of war in 1949;
but the US government found its obligations under this treaty irksome in the war
on terror that began in 2001; nevertheless it grudgingly announced that it would
abide by its obligations though it had a narrower view of what those obligations
were, and a much narrower view of the field of their application, than certain
jurists believed. 56 I shall say a lot more about the sacredness of treaty obligations
in the second part of Lecture 3.
And that brings me to a third point. One of the least credible aspects of the
rational choice approach is the monolithic character it attributes to nation-states.
Eric Posner is perhaps less guilty of this than others are: like Reinhold Niebuhr, but
for different reasons, he notes the presence in the nations he is describing of
55 True, there is provision for treaties to be repudiated, when circumstances change radically. I have written
elsewhere on the doctrine of rebus sic stantibus. But this doctrine has very limited operation. See JW, “The Half-
Life of Treaties: Waitangi and Rebus Sic Stantibus,”11 OTAGO LAW REVIEW (2006), 161.
56 See, e.g., John Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty, Application of Treaties and Laws to Al Qaeda and Taliban
Detainees, Memorandum for William J. Haynes, General Counsel, Department of Defense, January 9, 2002.
24

intellectual elites who stand up for the demands of global law even when less
elevated factions in the polity are howling for them to be repudiated. 57 This is not
just a matter of scholars versus political office-holders. In most countries,
chanceries, departments of state, ministries of foreign affairs are infested with
lawyers who are committed utterly and clear-headedly to the fulfilment of the
demands of international law. It is what they do for a living. They have made it a
vocation to find out what the law requires and advise their masters accordingly. In
order to get government lawyers to denigrate the demands of legality, you have to
actually import people like John Yoo from our law schools. No professional lawyer
in a career government post would ever adopt such an attitude.
12. Christian views of interest and order
What finally can a Christian add to this debate about rational choice? Two things.
First, we are likely to be quite suspicious of the assertion of any bright line
between self-interested behaviour and moral or idealistic behaviour. Awareness
of what is sometimes called original sin, or even just humility in the face of moral
vanity, necessarily leaves us open to the idea that there are important elements of
self-interest present even when one thinks of oneself as responding righteously to
the demands of law and justice. But this caution is by no means one-sided. For
equally, when humans are at their most cynical, hard-headed or avowedly selfish,
they often in spite of themselves pay tribute to strands of normativity and even
righteousness in their dealings with others: they do this in their hypocrisy, or in the
points about reputation that I mentioned a moment ago, or in the way their selfinterest
is conceived, or even just in the restraints they unthinkingly adopt when
they are at their most ferocious. These strands of normativity and legality
discernible in even the most distressing of human interactions—that is where
international law in a sense began. It was the mission of thinkers like Grotius and
Gentili to sift through the historical evidence of hard-headed war-mongering and
discern the elements of restraint that were there anyway—half-hearted, no doubt,
and often insincere; but that is how human legality enters the world.
That is a first Christian perspective on these points about realism and
rational choice. A second takes us in a different direction, and it is the last
observation I will make today, though it points us towards the discussion we will in
my second lecture next week have about nations and sovereignty.
I have said that a Christian approach to law at any level starts from the need
for order in the world. O’Donovan quotes St Paul to the Corinthians: “For God is
not a God of disorder, but of peace.” 58 There is to be order; there is to be justice
57 Cites: passage from Posner; passage from Niebuhr.
58 1 Corinthians 14: 33 -- quoted by O’Donovan at 227 (WJ?)
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(human justice); the vulnerable are to be protected and their claims of right
vindicated. Or, as an older prophetic tradition told us,
Bring no more futile sacrifices; incense is an abomination to me. … Your
new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates; they are a trouble to
me…. I will hide my eyes from you … I will not hear. Your hands are full
of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean…. Cease to do evil, learn
to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead
for the widow. Come now … let us reason together, says the Lord. 59
These simple and categorical demands play out at every level, and the force of
these demands is continuous in scale, from family, to neighbourhood, to nation, to
the world. The nation-state and national law have as their mission the doing of
justice, the rebuking of oppression, the defence of the widows and the fatherless,
and the vindication of the rights of the poor within the boundaries of a national
territory and among a delineated section of the world’s population. They have as
their mission the ordering of France or New Zealand or Argentina or the United
States. And this, at its best, national law does—though of course it is seldom at its
best. But this, at its best, national law does with a density and an intricacy and a
power that international law, global legality, cannot match. This can be
acknowledged. But the effectiveness with which the laws of nations order their
own realms does not make the challenge of ordering the world go away. There too
there is justice to be done; there are poor and vulnerable people to be protected,
norms of right and righteousness to be proclaimed, conflict to be resolved, evils to
be mitigated, human goods to be provided. If there is this need for a law of nations
as well as for the particular laws of nations, then we cannot set up the demands of
the one as a way of precluding the other. Nations and national law have their
mission and their dignity, but a Christian will not see any religious foundation for
setting up national self-interest, or the exigencies of national policy, in opposition
to the tasks of international governance. There is no basis in Christian thought for
any consecration of national sovereigns that would obstruct or interfere with the
ordering of the international realm. As I said the tasks of order are continuous. The
only claim that can be made in behalf of a national sovereign is that it is already
ordering a part of the world. But that is not a claim that can be set up against the
necessity of ordering the world as a whole. I will turn to this issue of sovereignty
in Monday’s lecture. But this is more than enough for today.
59 Isaiah 1: 13-18.
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Lecture Two: Monday, March 28, 2011
SOVEREIGNS, BORDERS, AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WORLD
1. Paul on the nations
My topic today is the division of the world into nations and the responsibilities of
national sovereigns in the international realm. To start us off, we begin—as we
began last Wednesday—with a story about the Apostle Paul.
It is a cosmopolitan story. Paul, a Jew from Asia Minor, is waiting in Athens
for his fellow evangelists (mostly from the Jerusalem community) to join him, in
his mission to preach a message to the peoples of what we would call Turkey,
Greece, and Italy that originated in the eastern margins of the Roman Empire, in
Palestine in the hills and seaside cities of Galilee. While he waits in Athens, Paul
engages in conversation and debate with Jewish Athenians, with non -Jewish
worshipers at the Jewish synagogue, and with Athenian philosophers, some Stoics
and Epicureans. Though the latter complain half-heartedly about his propaganda
for foreign deities, they are mostly curious to hear him—“What will this babbler
say?”—for, as we are told by the author of the Acts of the Apostles, “all the
Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but
either telling, or hearing some new thing.”
Their curiosity is evidently matched by Paul’s, for when he is not preaching
and debating, he is examining inscriptions on local shrines and altars. One
inscription actually indicates the Athenians’ openness to foreign religious ideas,
and Paul takes this as the starting point of an address he gives on Mars Hill, which
was a Roman name for the Areopagus—a large rocky area near the Acropolis. “Ye
men of Athens,” he begins
as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this
inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly
worship, him declare I unto you. 60
It’s a wonderful phrase; I know it from its inscription in great letters around the
inside of the central rotunda in St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia University: “Whom
therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” The whole story is an
excellent image of cosmopolitan encounter. 61
60 Acts 17: 17-23.
61 I have explored it as such in JW, “Teaching Cosmopolitan Right,” in Education and Citizenship in Liberal-
Democratic Societies: Cosmopolitan Values and Cultural Identities, Kevin McDonough and Walter Feinberg eds.
(Oxford University Press, 2003).
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So Paul continued, on that spot, preaching to the gentiles, an address that
was met with a fascinated mixture of mockery, curiosity, and—at least among a
few men and women—acceptance and conversion. One of the things he spoke
about was the division of the world into nations. He said:
God that made the world and all things therein … hath made of one blood all
nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined
the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.
Two crucial ideas: first, God has determined the bounds of the separate habitations,
the lands allotted to the various nations of the earth; but secondly, although they
are separated, with their separate habitations, all the nations of men are, ultimately,
of one blood. He has made the nations all of one blood. Through the Hebrew
scriptures, we find the same pair of ideas—the allotment of separate lands,
sometimes even the henotheistic idea of the allotment of separate gods, 62 to
separate nations, but the allotment taking place to people who are, in effect,
kindred—to, or the seed of Abraham, for example, who is told that he will be “a
father of many nations,” 63 or the sons of Noah, or, as a last resort, the sons of
Adam:
the Most High divided their inheritance to the nations, when He separated
the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the peoples according to the
64 65
number of the children of Israel.
Well, internationalism is not cosmopolitanism and it is no part of the
ambition of international law to erase the significance of nations, national
communities, municipal legal systems, or borders between states. I think the same
62 Deuteronomy 32: 8ff. I am grateful to Oliver O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, p. 67, for this reference and for
observations concerning what he calls the fossilized traces of Canaanite ‘henotheism’” that it contains. Henotheism,
I am told, is a term coined by Max Müller, to mean worshipping a single god while accepting the existence or
possible existence of other deities
63 Genesis 17: 4-6
64 Deuteronomy 32: 8
65 Or, more brutally, we have the idea of the allotment to the nations as a punishment, a diaspora, or smiting of
Promethean hubris or imperial ambition, in the story of the Tower of Babel. Though the whole earth was originally
“of one language, and of one speech, they set about building themselves a city, with a tower that reaches to
the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves. But the Lord came down to see the city and the
tower the people were building. The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have
begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and
confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’ So the Lord … confused the language of
the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
A scattering that, on some accounts, the great in-gathering of the nations, eventually, is supposed to reverse.
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can be said of Christian attitudes to international law. True, that body of law
depends on a particular attitude to nation-states, or rather it depends on the absence
of a particular attitude towards nation-states – i.e. the absence of any attitude that
takes national interest as all-consuming or that presents the exigencies of
international order as something that exerts moral force only at the sufferance of
national leadership. It depends in other words on a particular view of sovereignty.
And I am going to say a lot about that in today’s lecture.
But whatever we think about sovereignty, we must start from the point that
nations are the units of international law.
2. A Christian sense of place
The members of the nations of the earth are all of one blood; they are like brothers
and sisters to each other, whichever national community they belong to. They are
divided into nations. But their common blood, their kinship, matters more than
any historical, national, ethnic, or linguistic distinction.
This has to be the Christian premise—though in the Gospels it is arrived at
agonistically in Christ’s encounter with two foreign women, one, a woman of
Samaria, of whom Jesus asked a drink of water, and who responded to him
puzzled: “How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman
of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” 66 – and the other a
foreign woman whose daughter was disturbed and who asked him to help her:
The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him
that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. But Jesus said unto
her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children's
bread, and to cast it unto the dogs.
—“the children” being the children of Israel—
And she answered and said unto him, Yea, Lord: yet the dogs under the table
eat of the children's crumbs. And he said unto her, For this saying go thy
way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.
We are all kin, all one people, across all boundaries, each of us created in the
image of God. We all make our demands on God, and God makes his demands on
us. That’s the starting point.
Nation is not just people; it is territory. Some have been concerned about
the failure to develop an appropriate sense of place in the midst of Christian
cosmopolitanism. They defend a Christian emphasis on locality, emphasizing, for
example, the “this,” “there,” and “then” particularity of the incarnation. The Word
66 John 4: 7-29
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ecame flesh and dwelt among us, not among all peoples or at all places but in one
place in particular. No doubt. And that place, that people—a holy people—had
been prepared specially for his incarnation for millennia.
But Jesus was at pains to universalize his locality. He came from Nazareth,
but his reception there led him to observe that “[a] prophet is not without honour,
save in his own country.” 67 He was itinerant; he often turned his back on his own
kindred and commanded his disciples to do the same. The Samaritan woman I
mentioned, when she figured that she was dealing at least with a prophet (and
maybe something more) immediately set about testing him with a conundrum:
“Our ancestors, the Samaritans, worshipped on this mountain; and yet you Jews
say that in Jerusalem—Mount Zion—is the place where worship ought to take
place.” Christ’s response is immediately dismissive of preoccupations with place:
“Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor
yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. … [T]he hour cometh, and now is, when the
true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.”
Christians do have a hard job hanging on to a sense of place and thus
comprehending any special force attached to the territorial aspect of nationhood.
As Oliver O’Donovan puts it:
The Old Testament is full of the sense of place, but the New Testament is
indifferent to it. The Old Testament is the story of a love affair between a
tribe and its God, and a piece of land is the token of their affection and
disaffection. The New Testament is the charter of a world faith with eternity
in view, where neither race nor territory intervenes between God and
mankind. 68
It is ultimately a rootless vision, though O’Donovan is right to emphasize that this
involves not an evaporation of place altogether but an acknowledgement of its
contingency.
[H]uman beings are not stationery, like trees. They do not affirm their place
by standing still in it. They have patterns of going out and coming in, of
departure and return, identifying places as our own and other people’s and
identifying themselves and others as belonging to them … They move about
and among each other, wending their ways in and out and around each
other’s places….
As I have argued elsewhere, Christian universalism remains rooted but the
rootedness now is just the contingency of happening to be together in one another’s
67 Matthew 13:57
68 Oliver and Joan O’Donovan, Bonds of Imperfection, p. 307
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proximity. It is the contingency of the encounters in the story of the Good
Samaritan 69 —another Samaritan! (The occurrence of Samaritans in the Gospels is
almost always a reminder that gospel teaching steps resolutely across traditional
barriers of blood, history, and ethnicity.) That great parable in Luke’s gospel is
certainly intended to shake up our sense of place: there are, as O’Donovan notes,
“many societies where the rebuke of the parable strikes like a meteor against the
complacency of racial or class love,” or, as I have argued elsewhere, against the
complacency of community. 70 But far from making us indifferent to place, it
makes spatial proximity the issue.
A man is in need in a particular place, on the road, as it happens, to Jericho.
"[A] certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was." When he saw the
man who had been attacked by thieves, he simply went to him and helped him. He
invoked no checklist of community, no list of priorities for family over strangers,
co-nationals over the other inhabitants of the world. A man was in need right
there, in front of him; that was all he needed to know to recognize the man as a
neighbor. There is in this story, as Professor O’Donovan points out, “a nearness of
contingency, a chancing upon, … pure place, unqualified by any relation or
connection, but simply finding yourself next to somebody.” 71 Seeing the parable
as a story of immediate focused concern for a particular person who happens to be
in a particular place is enormously important, politically as well as ethically. Let
me explain.
3. The basis of political community
We divide into nations, and it is among our fellow citizens that we take our first
steps of responsibility for large-scale social order. Now there is a question about
whether Christians should associate themselves with nationalistic theories of
political community or with theories of political community based simply on
proximity, people happening to be, in the words of Immanuel Kant, “unavoidably
side-by-side.” 72
On the one view, we look for those we already like and trust—those who are
like us in language, custom or ethnicity and form a political community to house
and nourish the basis of our affinity. We form a nation amongst our kin or
69 Luke 10: 25-37. See also JW, “Who is my Neighbor?—Proximity and Humanity,” 86 The Monist (2003), 333 and
JW, “On the Road: Good Samaritans and Compelling Duties,” 40 Santa Clara Law Review (2000), 1053.
70 JW, “Secularism and the Limits of Community: a Response to George Rupp,” in George Rupp, Globalization
Challenged: Conviction, Conflict, Community (Columbia University Press, 2006), 52-67. Also available at
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1722780
71 Oliver O’Donovan, “The Loss of a Sense of Place,” in Oliver O’Donovan and Joan Lockwood O’Donovan, Bonds
oif Imperfection: Christian Politics, Past and Present (Eerdmans, 2004).
72 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, §42.
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ethren, to the exclusion of those who are of other lines of human descent. On the
other view—associated with Kant and also with Hobbes—we organize ourselves
into political communities in order to establish justice among those to whom there
is a danger that we will act unjustly, or to resolve conflicts among those to whom
our proximity is likely to generate tangled and endemic conflict. On the one view,
we form a community among those we have reason to trust and love. On the other
view—again a Hobbesian view—we join in community from fear of each other,
with those whom we would otherwise fight. 73
On the one view, boundaries are set by the limits of a distinct people’s
immemorial presence in a land, following lines of clear separation from strangers.
On the other view, boundaries are haphazard and arbitrary—the residue of history
or providence—representing nothing much more significant than the place where
the efforts of one group of people to do justice and resolve conflict among
themselves ran up against the efforts of another group of people to do justice and
resolve conflict among themselves—each group consisting of an array of people
who, happening to find themselves in one another’s vicinity, had no choice but to
try and order their relations. In O’Donovan’s words, people are always coming in
and going out; for a time they just happen to be where others are; that is the basis
of political community
I think it is well-known which of these alternatives I favor. 74 I said in my
lecture last week that entering into political community is a duty, not an option;
and I believe the same is true with the choice of who we enter into political
community with. We are not to pick and choose. We have a duty to enter into
political community with those who happen to be in our vicinity—and our
relatedness to one another in a nation is initially nothing much thicker than that.
This is not in itself necessarily a Christian position; it is not dictated by
scripture and it can be reached by other routes. But it is supported by Christian
teaching in two ways. It is supported, first, in the rebuttal of any claim that ties of
(say) ethnic affinity matter more than the common humanity evinced in simple
proximity. It is supported, secondly, in Christian conceptions about the
transcendence of grievance and the renunciation of nurtured distrust of strangers. I
mean Christian theses about forgiveness and about safety in the face of enmity—
73 Hobbes associates political community among humans with conflict. What interests him is “how and by what
stages, in the passion for self-preservation, a number of natural persons from fear of each other have coalesced into
one civil person to which we have given the name of commonwealth” (Hobbes, De Cive, CUP edition, p. 74).
“From fear of each other,” that’s the point—diffidence, suspicion, conflict, and the possibility of a war of all against
all (individually or in small scale factions) that is likely to result from that – that’s the basis of political community.
74 I have defended it in a paper called “The Principle of Proximity,” available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1742413
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that it is possible to love an enemy, 75 and bring enmity and distrust to an end; that
it is possible to recognize something in common even with those you have a
grudge of injustice against (“I say to you, love your enemies, … that you may be
sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the
good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust”); that it is possible to prove
neighbor—good neighbor—to someone with whom there have been the strongest
grounds of historical and ethnic antagonism.
4. Self-determination
Does this mean that Christians shouldn’t care about self-determination? – one of
the foundations of modern conceptions of international law? Well, it didn’t seem
to bother Augustine, who wrote, in his meditations on empire
[A]s far as this life of mortals is concerned, which is spent and ended in a
few days, what does it matter under whose government a dying man lives, if
they who govern do not force him to impiety and iniquity? Did the Romans
… harm those nations, on whom … they imposed their laws, except in as far
as that [i.e., their subjection] was accomplished with great slaughter in
war? 76
If self-determination is important, it is important not as a property of peoples
defined antecedently. On a Christian view it is a mistake, bordering on pagan
idolatry, to elevate ethnic or national identity to make it the be-all and end-all of
legitimate government. 77 So I think in terms of a thin theory of self-determination,
as opposed to the thicker theories that people like Will Kymlicka and Joseph Raz
and Avishai Margalit have posited. 78 Self-determination is an artifact of proximity.
It should be seen as simply the fixed responsibility of those who happen to live
75 Matthew 5: 43-47: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I
say to you, love your enemies, … that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the
evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward
have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more
than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is
perfect.
76 CG 5:17
77 Though Oliver O’Donovan is right in his oft-repeated denunciation of the hubris of Christian cosmopolitanism, he
is also right in his more muted warnings against any people’s intoxication with or worship of itself or its identity.
And Joan Lockwood O’Donovan has also warned against extrapolating any nationalist generalization from what we
know of “the absolute historic uniqueness” of God’s special mission for the nation of Israel. See her “Nation, State
and Civil Society in the Western Biblical Tradition,” in Bonds of Imperfection, esp. p. 285.
78 See the contrasting positions of Jeremy Waldron and Will Kymlicka on self-determination in Besson & Tasioulas
(eds.) The Philosophy of International law (OUP, 2010). For another version of the thicker view, see also Avishai
Margalit & Joseph Raz, “National Self-Determination,” Journal of Philosophy, 87 (1990), 439.
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side-by-side with one another for constituting and sustaining order in the territory
they happen to inhabit.
Let me explain that a little more. I have indicated in these lectures that
governance in any time or place is a matter of moral responsibility. The primary or
primal responsibility for good governance falls upon those who are to be governed:
it is for them, in the first instance, as moral beings, with the dignity of moral
capacity and self-direction, to comport themselves in their relations with others in a
way that makes justice, judgment, and the pursuit of the common good possible.
To the extent that people need governance and order it is the their responsibility, in
the first instance, to provide this for themselves—whoever they are, whoever they
may be in the array of relations that needs ordering—it is their responsibility to
make themselves governable and to take active responsibility for ensuring that
their relations with others are subjected to institutions and political processes. 79
5. Internal sovereignty
Now it is time to talk about sovereignty—the legal and political expression of the
unity and decisiveness of a community’s life together. Everyone knows that
sovereignty has two aspects: internal and external. Though our interest is in
international law, we have to talk about both.
Internally, sovereignty is the attribute of some person or entity in the state
that embodies the overall unity, force, and superiority of state and law. Externally,
the sovereign is the entity entitled to act decisively for a whole country in its
dealings with entities outside the country, particularly other governments and
international organizations. When the US signs a treaty or joins something like
the WTO, it exercises sovereignty. (External sovereignty may be exercised by a
particular entity within the government, such as the executive (or the executiveplus-the
Senate) or by the federal government as opposed to the state governments.
But often we say that the country as a whole is sovereign—in the way that it
presents itself to other entities in the outside world.
It was once believed that no legal system could exist without an internal
legal sovereign 80 —so that man, who needed law, needed sovereignty. But this is
now widely rejected among modern legal philosophers, who accept the argument
of H.L.A. Hart that sovereignty is itself a structure of legal rules and that the
fundamental structure of legal rules in a polity can also have a shape that need not
79 (Of course, most of us wake to find ourselves already compassed about with such institutions and processes; and
in that case, as I have already emphasized, our prime responsibility is not to disrupt those processes, but render unto
them whatever they legitimately require in the way of our cooperation and forbearance to perform their necessary
tasks.)
80 Jeremy Bentham, John Austin, etc.
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e characterized in terms of sovereignty at all. 81 It also used to be the belief of
some political philosophers, notably Thomas Hobbes, that the elementary
conditions of peace and order required internal sovereignty. But again, modern
political science has shown that there can be law and good order in a constitutional
state, which is not predicated on sovereign absolutism. Hannah Arendt remarked
that American constitutionalism represented the comprehensive abolition of
sovereignty from governance in the US. 82 There is in the US Constitution no one
body with decisive overall power (as there was in the UK in Dicey’s time, for
example). The American constitutional system is designed specifically to preclude
that.
This means we can be agnostic about internal sovereignty. Some political
systems have it; others don’t. The Christian has no dog in this fight. 83 Everything
depends on whether, in the circumstances, a given structure of constitution is
capable of performing responsibly the tasks of governance that have to be
performed in a given community. As Robin Lovin put it in a memo to our
Theology and International law Working Group: “We seek theories in which
sovereignty also fixes responsibility” 84 A sovereign parliament, even a sovereign
monarch may perform the tasks of governance and order; but so may a nonsovereign
structure of republican constitutionalism.
No doubt, there are certain theories of internal sovereignty that Christians
are bound to reject. We must reject any idea that persons or peoples should bind
up their whole identity in the state. We have a higher destiny than that: “here have
we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” 85 Also no Christian can accept
81 See H.L.A. Hart, The Concept of Law, Ch. 4.
82 Arendt, On Revolution, p. 153: “[T]he greatest American innovation in politics … was the consistent abolition of
sovereignty within the body politic of the republic, the insight that in the realm of human affairs, sovereignty and
tyranny are the same.” quote
83 Like monarchy perhaps, internal sovereignty is an option for a Christian polity. True, monarchy has had a
venerable existence in the history of Christendom. It is not ruled out, but it is not required. Ancient Israel had a
monarchy, given but not ordained by God: God specifically warned the Israelites about its dangers when they asked
Him for a king, and Israel’s experience with monarchy was decidedly mixed. (I Samuel 8: 9-18.) I am aware that
sovereignty monarchy, but I use the examples in this paragraph just to illustrate the inconclusiveness of Christian
arguments about particular political forms. We recognize the kingship of Christ after His ascension and exaltation
and we expect Him to come again on earth in great glory as king and judge. But we are not required to model our
political systems on the kingship of Christ or mimic the sovereignty of the Almighty.
84 Lovin memo: “If sovereignty begins as an absolute power deemed essential to the creation of political order, then
rethinking sovereignty in terms of responsibility is simply deciding to talk about something else, to see if we can
build a political order on that. If, however, the political order exists as part of a moral and theological order, even
before it is expressed in modern political forms, then sovereignty (or any other concept used to explain political
power) becomes a more elastic term, subject to redefinition not only in light of changing circumstances, but also in
relation to the more comprehensive moral and theological order. Political positivism, almost by definition, starts
where it starts. Moral and theological realism tries to figure out where we are, so as to begin (again) from there.”
85 Hebrews 13: 14.
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the Hobbesian position that, as part of our subjection to an earthly sovereign, we
are to use the sovereign’s commands and only sovereign’s commands as our only
guide to right and wrong. 86 We have other imprescriptible sources of moral
insight.
6. Democracy
What about democracy? Is that also something we should be agnostic about,
recognizing that the responsibilities of governing and ordering a given society can
be fulfilled democratically or undemocratically, depending on the practice and
history of a given regime? Some have thought so. John Finnis, in the excellent
chapter on political authority in Natural Law and Natural Rights argued that we
should not condition the performance of our duty to play our part in governance
around here on the government’s having any particular credentials of consent or
democratic support. His view is that “[a]uthority (and thus the responsibility of
governing) in a community is to be exercised by those who can in fact effectively
settle coordination problems for that community,” 87 no matter who they are or how
popular they are.
Finnis is half-right, I think. There are compelling tasks to be performed, and
they must be performed whether there are democratic mechanisms to perform them
or not. One way or another, responsibility must be taken within a country for the
overall discharge of the proper tasks of order and justice in that country. The same
is true of the tasks of order in the international realm. In America, scholarly critics
of international law assail it for its undemocratic character, and they think this is an
irremediable fault, since no one can see how there can be any other than the most
attenuated democratic mechanisms for the ordering of the world. 88 But they are
wrong in the conclusion they infer. Just because democracy is unavailable in this
realm, doesn’t mean that the tasks of international governance evaporate. At both
levels, national and international, the tasks are urgent, in the sense of immediately
compelling. If we do not quickly organize to get them performed, great loss or
harm or injustice may result. This affects how we regard the powers that be—i.e.
that actually exist—however imperfect we may judge them. We have a
responsibility to play our part in and not to obstruct the ordering of the world
whether democratic mechanisms are available for doing so or not.
86 Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 26: “Civil law is to every subject those rules which the Commonwealth hath commanded
him, by word, writing, or other sufficient sign of the will, to make use of for the distinction of right and wrong”
87 NLNR (p. 246). “Consent, transmission, contract, custom—none of these is needed to constitute the state of
affairs which (presumptively) justifies someone in claiming and others in acknowledging his authority to settle
coordination problems for a whole community by creating authoritative rules or issuing authoritative orders and
determinations.” Ibid., pp. 248-9.
88 See e.g. McGinnis and Soman, “Should international law be part of our law?” 59 Stanford L. Rev. 1175 (2007)
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On the other hand, Finnis it seems to me pushes the issue of democracy
aside too lightly. If democracy is a possibility, in a given political setting, then
Christian political thought is far from indifferent to it. Christian attitudes to
democracy should be informed by attention to the connection between God’s
commandment to order the world and the special dignity of the active political
intellect of each person. Our church leaders may be called pastors, but our destiny
is not to be sheep-like, in either ecclesiastical or political affairs. The National
Association of Evangelicals has affirmed, in its statement on civic responsibility
that
We engage in public life because God created our first parents in his image
and gave them dominion over the earth (Gen. 1:27-28). … The
responsibilities that emerge from that mandate are many, and in a modern
society those responsibilities rightly flow to many different institutions,
including governments, families, churches, schools, businesses, and labor
unions. Just governance is part of our calling in creation. 89
And democracy is a way in which that vocation is exercised responsibly and fairly
among millions of individuals. 90
7. International Responsibility
I have suggested that, with this reservation about democracy, Christians are largely
agnostic on particular forms of political power. Parliamentary sovereignty,
constitutional democracy, responsible monarchy when democracy is not
available—these can all be ways of discharging the tasks of governance and order
that descend upon the ordinary nation-state.
I believe a similar agnosticism is justified in international affairs. I do not
mean agnosticism about the tasks of order incumbent on those who inhabit the
world. Those tasks include the securing of peace, the relief of famine and natural
disaster, the sheltering of refugees, the regulation of armed conflict, and where
necessary the organized opposition to violence and aggression; and they also
include the less dramatic but affirmative tasks of international cooperation—trade,
communications, travel, migration etc., that I spoke about last week. Some of
these challenges arise mainly out of the interaction of nation-states. Others—like
89 National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic
Responsibility (available at http:// www.nae.net/images/civic_responsibility.pdf ), p. 2. See also David P. Gushee,
“Evangelicals and Politics: A Rethinking,” J. Law & Religion, 23 (2007-8), 1.
90 Some biblical scholars note that the Genesis account of imago Dei turned its back deliberately on the ancient
Babylonian proposition that the king alone was created in the image of God and that this status underwrote his
exercise of regal power. We now see this regal image in every man. So, to the extent that it is exercised politically,
the image of God is necessarily represented by the participation of millions in a polity not just one person.
37

the challenge of climate change—might arise anyway, irrespective of our forms of
mid-level political organization. As I said, many of these tasks are urgent, in the
sense of immediately compelling. If we do not quickly organize to get them
performed, they will not be performed: and great loss or harm may result.
Responding to these challenges, I believe, requires some sort of cooperation
through the medium of law and institutions, on an international scale. 91 One way or
another, attention has to be paid to their performance. Responsibility must be
taken for the overall discharge of the proper tasks of governance in the world at
large, including the governing of relations between the entities that are taking
responsibility for discharging the proper tasks of government in each particular
country. That is the major premise.
But my view is that a Christian will be in principle agnostic about the
institutional facilities through which law operates to frame our discharge of these
responsibilities.
8. World government
But should we not dismiss out of hand the prospect of world government? I
wonder. If it turned out that order in the world could be secured, and could only be
secured, under the auspices of empire, or a world state, or under the auspices of an
international rule of law that preempted and crowded out national sovereignty, then
we should presumably render unto Caesar (now in a more or less literal sense)
whatever is necessary for Caesar to do the requisite work (unless that is
incompatible with rendering unto God that which is God’s).
Oliver O’Donovan maintains that Christians should oppose any such idea of
world government. “In securing the total tradition of humanity, we are in a context
in which it is out of place to invoke the commanding role of government,” though
not, he adds, the commanding role of law. 92 But the reasons he produces seems to
me to add little to familiar Kantian apprehensions, in Perpetual Peace and
elsewhere, about the extent of empire and possible global despotism. 93
Professor O’Donovan says that every government, however, imperial, loses
its identity if it cannot contrast itself with others. “Whatever their claim to
universality, in practice all empires need [to] define their identity by excluding
people who live beyond them.” 94 But why should this sort of definition of identity
be judged desirable, given what he has said elsewhere about the connection
91 We have talked about the Christian basis of this assumption at our earlier sessions.
92 O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 73
93 Kant, Toward Perpetual Peace (1795), and ___ [?]
94 O’Donovan, The Ways of Judgment, 214.
38

etween pride and faction and the formation of communal identities? 95
O’Donovan also says that
it is essential to our humanity that there should always be foreigners, human
beings from another community who have an alternative way of organizing
the task and privilege of being human, so that our imaginations are refreshed
and our sense of cultural possibilities renewed. 96
But he does not explain why that sense of renewal cannot be nourished by the vast
diversity of minds and practices, the vast civil society, that would exist within an
integrated world community.
He does worry, quite rightly, about the hubris of empire: “The titanic
temptation which besets collectives needs the check of a perpetual plurality at the
universal level.” And he tells us that, whatever Paul’s acquiescence in or appeal to
the pax Romana, the biblical tradition is fundamentally one that sees empire on a
world scale as a “bestial deformation.” The biblical tradition awaits the collapse of
the titans, and the emergence, as he puts it, of “[a] family of humble nations
[creeping] out from the wreckage of empire.” 97 The humility of nationhood
compared to world empire is his strongest suit. This is part and parcel of
O’Donovan’s consistent counsel in favor of modesty in our aspirations for
international law. As I said last week, in ordering the world we are not building
the new Jerusalem. That point is well taken.
The idea of world government is frightening to most people: black
helicopters, blue helmets, and comprehensive disenfranchisement of everyone
except the bureaucrats in Geneva or at the easternmost end of 42 nd Street in New
York. We should recall, however, that the idea of a world state is in many respects
an ambiguous phrase, and along several possible dimensions it is a matter of
degree.
So let us ask: is any movement at all in the direction of world government
inappropriate? If we define states in Weberian terms, then we can think of a
continuum between a world government having no armed forces of its own all the
way through to a tightly controlled organization exercising a monopoly of force in
the world. 98 We are so close to the left-hand pole of this spectrum—for as things
stand international institutions barely have the wherewithal to exercise force at all
in the world, let alone monopolize it, though the UN Charter does seek a degree of
95 Ibid., 212. See also The Desire of the Nations, 235.
96 O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, p. 268.
97 Ibid., p. 71.
98 I am thinking of the definition of “state” in Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” as an organized entity that
possesses a monopoly on the forms of legitimated violenc,.
39

control. We are so close to minimalism in this respect that it would be a little
hysterical to oppose any movement along the spectrum at all on the grounds of
titanic totalitarianism. And as for other definitions of the state—Kelsenian
definitions in terms of law, or institutional definitions, it is not at all clear that
O’Donovan has provided any reason for concern about initiatives that look for the
improvement and improved coherence of the institutional apparatus that already
exists.
There are and need to be international legal institutions and processes—
ranging from the UN and its affiliates, the ICJ, international arbitration
arrangements, treaty regimes, diplomatic conventions, even the WTO and GATT,
not to mention various ad hoc agencies and tribunals. Each of these in its way
takes responsibility for some aspects of global governance. But—and this is
important—these processes and agencies have not been organized in a way that
ensures that overall responsibility will be taken for every aspect of necessary
global governance, i.e. in a way that ensures nothing will fall through the cracks ,as
it were. These processes have not been organized in the image of comprehensive
state sovereign responsibility, in the way that the institutions and processes of a
national government are supposed to have been organized.
Every so often international organizations and jurists undertake some
initiative to fill these gaps. The setting up of the International Criminal Court, for
example, was an attempt by the international community to begin replacing the
haphazard ad hoc character of entities like the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia (ICTFY) with some more comprehensive and legitimatelygrounded
system of criminal law accountability. 99 And similarly the attempt since
1945 to develop an overall framework for regulating the use of armed force, under
the auspices of the UN Charter and the Security Council, has made much progress
in a Weberian direction—by which I mean, not that it has put together an
overwhelming armed force, but that it at least purports to monopolize the
legitimation of the deployment of armed force in the international arena. There
is—in these various contexts—an active sense of general responsibility that begins
to answer to principle of international responsibility. And further improvement in
that direction should surely be welcomed.
The strongest suit of those who oppose world government in any more
robust sense is the simple pragmatic point that it ain’t going to happen. For the
time being, and in present circumstances, primary responsibility for the existence,
integrity, comprehensive coverage, and overall effectiveness of global governance
rests with the community of independent states, acting as multilateral law-makers,
99 For concerns about the legitimacy of ICTFY, see the discussion of the jurisdictional objection in the Tadic case, in
James Crawford, “The Rule of Law in International Law,” 24 Adelaide LR 3 (2003).
40

occasional enforcers, custom-generators, and sponsors of international courts and
other institutions.
Some say we live in a ‘post-sovereignty’ world. The reality of national
sovereignty is undermined to a considerable extent by global developments, by
regional political organization, by international institutions (to a certain extent) as
well as by the growing disparity of power among nation-states themselves. Maybe
this means sovereignty no longer exists. Robin Lovin said in a memo to our
working group:
If the economic requirements of a global market or established practices of
international intervention create inherent limits on the exercise of sovereign
power, does this mean that sovereignty no longer exists? Or only that the
scope of sovereign power has changed? 100
I am not sure how to answer Robin’s question. But I am sure that not every move
away from sovereignty enhances the prospects for international order. Some make
order and justice less likely as global markets replace whatever shreds of
conscience a convention of empowered sovereigns might once have possessed.
9. Strong but self-limiting sovereignty
Whether we like it or not, the situation is that, at best, we are stuck with
O’Donovan’s vision of law, at the international level, without state at the
international level. “The appropriate unifying element in international order is law
rather than government.” 101 For the time being, it is the responsibility of nationstates—jointly
and severally—to make international law and to make it work; and
to create international institutions and to make them work.
So: can the responsibility for global order be discharged by nations, acting
together, if a little willfully and in a prickly way that is jealous of their
sovereignty? Can it be done under the auspices of a strong doctrine of sovereignty?
I think it can, provided that the prickly foot-stamping mantra of sovereign
independence—“We’re not going to be bound unless we say so!”—is matched by a
studied awareness of the point that unless we, the nations of the earth, voluntarily
take responsibility for doing this, it probably won’t be done.
100 To: CTI WORKING GROUP ON INTERNATIONAL LAW From: 11/10/2008
101 The Desire of the Nations, p. 72. See also ibid., 236: “Law holds equal and independent subjects together
without allowing one to master the other. The last and greatest of the accomplishments of Christendom was the
conception that there exists, not merely as an ideal but in fact, an international law, dependent on no regime … but
on the Natural Law implanted in human minds by God and given effect by international custom and convention.”
41

10. God-like sovereignty; God-like limitation
It is sometimes said that the modern sovereign state was conceived in the image of
a sovereign God, and that doctrines of sovereign illimitability must therefore be
combatted by conceptions of a self-limiting God. That is, sovereign illimitability
needs to be countered by a conception of God’s sovereignty that downplays
theological voluntarism and emphasizes the covenantal redemptive ways in which
God might be thought to have bound or limited himself. God created this
dangerous role model, therefore God has to get us out of it by presenting Himself
in a more moderate light. Or, as Robin Lovin put it, “just as theology contributed
much to the idea of sovereignty as absolute authority at the beginning of the
modern period, theology may here be useful in understanding self-limitation.” 102
Members of our working group were very taken with the second of these ideas. In
my view it is all a big distraction. Let me briefly explain why.
First of all, it does not seem to me to be true that the modern or even the
early-modern sovereign state can be understood as an image of the divine
sovereignty of late medieval voluntarist theology, in which God acts with absolute
freedom, unrestrained by reason, God’s own nature, or the order of goods which
God has created. 103 Early modern theorists did not model their conceptions of
absolute sovereignty on what they thought was the sovereignty of God. 104 Apart
from some occasional decorative remarks to this effect –Hobbes’s remarks about a
“mortall god”—the argument for internal sovereignty in Bodin and Hobbes (and
their argument for absolutist) was utterly functional and pragmatic, not theological.
Also, if it were true, it would be true at most about internal sovereignty—
absolute internal sovereignty along the lines of Hobbes’s or Bodin’s conception.
That’s certainly where Hobbes used the rhetoric of a “mortall God.” But how could
the analogy possibly work for external sovereignty in the international sphere?—
the conception of god-like sovereignty would have to be polytheistic.
I don’t doubt that there have been instances of idolatrous sovereigntyworship,
and I shall say something more about them at the very end of this lecture.
But actually the main problem with sovereignty in the international realm has not
been with getting people to embrace the idea of a self-limiting sovereign. In fact
that is something which I think all modern defenders of state sovereignty accept.
They all accept that states may enter into covenants and treaties and that they are
102 To: CTI WORKING GROUP ON INTERNATIONAL LAW From: Robin Lovin 11/10/2008
103 The language here is adapted from Jean Bethke Elshtain, Sovereignty: God, State, and Self (New York: Basic
Books, 2008). Elshtain holds the position I am criticising here.
104 The mistake usually involves carelessly cobbling together three or four different political themes that have “God”
in them: divine right of kings; sacral (anointed) aspect of kingship; and the medieval doctrine of the king’s two
bodies. None of these by itself intimates any analogy between the king’s sovereignty and God’s sovereignty; and
the combination of them does not do so either.
42

ound by them. The problem is getting them to accept the idea of a nation being
bound by an international norm that does not reflect voluntary self-limitation—by
some other source of international law such as ius cogens or customary
international law. For that problem any theological work that we do on the idea of
a voluntarily self-limiting God is useless.
So—although it is theologically fascinating to consider the idea of a selflimiting
God—self-limitation through covenant in God’s dealings with His chosen
people and in His redemptive promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our
Lord—and although it is interesting to consider Luther’s distinction between deus
revealatus, God as revealed in his covenants, and deus absconduitus, the real
sovereign God that lies hidden beyond, who is always capable of acting arbitrarily,
and although we might want to applaud Karl Barth for his denunciation of that
distinction, his assertion God’s sovereignty is his word, in which he has bound
himself in Jesus Christ 105 —although all of this is of staggering theological interest,
it is of very little use and relevance in the theory of international law, where, as I
said, the sovereign is not conceived in the image of God in the first place, and in
the second place the possibility of sovereign self-limitation is freely conceded.
I own that there is a little bit more to say about this. Certainly our
understanding of the sanctity of treaties can be enhanced by an understanding of a
covenantal God. I will talk at length about the sacredness and solemnity of treaties
on Wednesday. We will have some fun with this, with everyone from Abram to
Nietzsche. But the idea of self-limitation per se is not itself the problem—though
the seriousness of the resultant obligations may be.
11. Sovereignty and national interest.
A much more intractable problem has to do with the issue of national self-interest.
Christians with their sense of universal obligation will be particularly alert to the
tendency of nations to sluice—this is Reinhold Niebuhr’s phrase, from his 1932
classic, Moral Man and Immoral Society—to sluice the entirety of a people’s
altruism into the reservoir of nationalism. 106 Niebuhr said this about the paradox of
patriotism,
The paradox is that patriotism transmutes individual unselfishness into
national egoism. Loyalty to the nation is a high form of altruism when
compared to lesser loyalties and more parochial interest. It therefore
becomes the vehicle of all the altruistic impulses, and express itself, on
occasion, with such fervor that the critical attitude of the individual toward
105 Get cites from Christiane Tietz’s paper.
106 Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics
43

the nation is almost completely destroyed. The unqualified character of this
devotion is the very basis of the nation’s power and of the freedom to use the
power without moral restraint. Thus the unselfishness of individuals makes
for the selfishness of nations. That is why the hope of solving the larger
social problems of mankind, merely by extending the social sympathies of
individuals, is so vain.
George Kateb has said something similar in his essay on patriotism. 107 And we are
familiar too with a similar phenomenon in the case of devotion to family which, as
David Hume noted, may be a “noble … affection,” yet “instead of fitting men for
large societies, is almost as contrary to them as the most narrow selfishness.” 108
Niebuhr is doubtful that this paradox can be resolved. I suspect that if it can,
the key will lie as much in the rather thin and diffident sense of nationhood (among
potential enemies) that I defended at the beginning of this lecture as in any thesis
of Christian love for neighbour that transcends national boundaries.
12. Sovereignty and Human Rights
This brings me to the final thing that I want to discuss this afternoon. One of the
key issues in the confrontation between sovereignty and international law is the
issue of a sovereign state being constrained from the outside by international
human rights law in the way it treats its own citizens or subjects.
The response from many dictatorial regimes when they are reproached in
this way is to: “This is none of the world’s business. This is an internal matter
between us and our citizens.” And some non-dictatorial regimes say this as well.
There was a furious denunciation in these terms from within the United States
when foreign and international law were appealed to, a few years ago, to justify a
judicial court decision banning the juvenile death penalty—that is, the execution of
young men for crimes committed while they were children. 109 And a dispute in
similar terms is raging in the United Kingdom as we speak, over a decision by
Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, telling the British
government that it is not permitted to continue its blanket ban on prisoners’ voting,
because that is at odds with the terms of the First Protocol to the European
Convention on Human Rights. 110
One immediate answer to the sovereign response is to say, “Well, it may
once not have been the world’s business,” but it has been made the world’s
107 Kateb, “Patriotism and other Mistakes,” in a book with the same title.
108 Hume, Treatise, III, ii
109 Roper v. Simmons (2005)
110 Cite to Hirst, No. 2 decision, and various consultative documents from HMG.
44

usiness by treaties that the offending nation has entered into, in the case of the
United Kingdom on prisoners’ voting by the treaty that established the European
Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), both of which were signed and ratified by
the UK. Article 46 of the ECHR represents an undertaking by the UK, like all
other “High Contracting Parties, “to abide by the final judgment of the Court in
any case to which they are parties.” This is a treaty obligation, voluntarily
assumed, and owed to all the other states that are party to the relevant conventions
and covenants as a matter of contractual good faith.
But it is not a sufficient answer—because many international jurists would
say that states are bound by the fundamentals of human rights law, irrespective of
their treaty undertakings. Some regard human rights conventions as “declaratory
of universally binding international custom,” 111 perhaps understood as ius cogens
norms—and some have suggested even that these norms are legally binding simply
as natural law or divine decrees—a position I shall consider in detail on
Wednesday. Maybe there is no ius cogens norm against the juvenile death penalty
or felony disenfranchisement, but there are ius cogens or natural law-based norms
against torture, the use of death squads, and aggressive war. So we have to
consider the possibility that states may be bound on some of these matters against
their will.
In terms of the framework that I have been using, we have questions to ask
about global responsibility. Is the issue of human rights—so far as it relates to the
way sovereigns treat their own subjects—is this something on which we need
global governance? I take it that no one doubts that governments ought to be
constrained by fundamental rights within their own community: leaders are
answerable to God for their violations and to their own people, and in extremis
their own people, who have the responsibility for constituting just government in
their territory, are authorized and perhaps required to resist or overthrow a regime
that is oppressive in these ways. The responsibility is primarily internal. This is a
point that has been made many times by Michael Walzer concerning humanitarian
intervention 112 and it’s a point that can be made about human rights generally. But
why is it a matter of global concern?
Some will say: it is because the relevant standards (or rights) that ought to be
enforced in each country are universal and objective. The Christian can certainly
accept that, and it is surely important for the world as a whole to bear witness to
the fundamental requirements of decent treatment of people, the fundamental
111 According to my NYU colleague, Ted Meron, in his book Human Rights and Humanitarian Norms, p. 35, “many
of the provisions of these Conventions [he meant the Geneva Conventions] , following as they do from compelling
considerations of humanity, are declaratory of universally binding international custom”
112 Thinking Politically: Essays in Political Theory by Michael Walzer, selected, edited, and with an introduction by
David Miller, pp. __.
45

equirements of human dignity—to communicate loudly and publicly to every
sovereign that these demands are not just the perverse contentions of impudent
troublemakers but a normative heritage that stands now, in the broad recognition
and solemn agreement of the whole world.
Some will say that, even if we accept this, it doesn’t follow that a global
consensus on the meaning of particular human rights is correct and that the law of
any individual nation is wrong to the extent that it is at odds with that. Considered
as moral propositions, human rights are universal. But universalism is not a
consensus notion; it is an objective truth notion; it says that the truth is the same
everywhere, whatever people happen to believe. Uniformity doesn’t guarantee that
we have all got the right answer; all it means is that we have the same answer.
Certainly this is something that humility compels us to recognize on questions like
(say) the juvenile death penalty. The outliers may be right and the consensus may
be wrong. If God or nature countenances the death penalty at all, it may be better
for it to be administered in the case of young murderers like Christopher Simmons
on the basis of case-by-case decision-making by juries rather than by the per se
rule that the international community seems to favour. At least for these cases
where good faith disagreement seems possible, it is not clear why, in the words of
the preamble to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights that “a common
understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full
realization” of the pledge that Member States have given to one another, to
promote universal respect for human rights.
You might think that is a culpably conservative position, selling short our
liberal convictions in the name of fallibility. So be it. There is more to be said
about the value of treating like cases alike in the world, in the realm of human
rights: I have tried to say some of it in a forthcoming book based on my 2007
Storrs Lecture at Yale, entitled Partly Laws Common to All Mankind.
Let me mitigate by saying this. One thing that I hope will not be
controversial is that whatever attitude we take towards fallibility and commonality
in this area, we cannot any longer accept the old-fashioned contention that respect
for sovereignty, in and of itself, requires us to mute or suppress our respect for the
individual victims of sovereignty—our respect for the people whose fundamental
rights we judge are clearly being violated by their government. We may counsel
“hands-off” for reasons of prudence, or out of respect for the differences revealed
as between democratic decision-making in our country and democratic decisionmaking
in another country on issues where we know there is room for good faith
disagreement. But we must not abandon our concern for the victims of tyranny —
our public and lawful concern—or deafen ourselves to the cries of the oppressed
simply on account of our respect for the tyrant’s sovereignty.
46

Formalistically, some jurists still say that the only subjects of international
law are national sovereigns—international law is about sovereigns’ rights against
one another, not the rights of natural individuals. They say that the people of the
world are rather like livestock belonging to the sovereigns or chattels, objects
whose interests are of no inherent concern to international law. I take it that
nobody today wants to be associated with that sort of offensive pedantry, at least
outside the towers of narrow scholasticism. Certainly a Christian conception of
international law will never lose sight of the fact that, ultimately, the subjects of
real concern are individual men and women, billions of them, for whose interests
sovereigns are at best trustees (both internally and externally). As trustees, they are
supposed to operate lawfully. They are supposed to operate in a way that is
mindful that the peaceful and ordered world that we seek in international law is
something sought not for the sake of national sovereigns themselves, but for the
sake of the millions of men, women, communities, and businesses who are
committed to their care. These millions are the ones who are likely to suffer if the
international order is disrupted; they are the ones whose prosperity is secure when
the international order is secure. Their well-being, not the well-being of sovereign
nation-states, is the ultimate raison d’être.
The cry of the oppressed is not something that can properly be drowned out
by the proud majesty of a sovereign, or something that can be dismissed as
impudent and troublesome by a realist’s enthusiasm to flatter a sovereign with the
shock and awe of his power. Sovereign dignity is no doubt important, but Emeric
de Vattel spoke nonsense when he said once that it is founded on the same
principle as individual dignity. Sovereigns have great responsibilities and they
should be credited for those when they discharge them. But ultimately, in the
Christian ontology, the dignity of a sovereign is minuscule, compared to the
dignity of one human individual. It is individual men, women, and children who
are—each of them—created in the image of God. (I believe that Christians should
have nothing to do with the view put forward by the young Rawls and others that it
is communities that are created in the image of God, because the godhead itself—
the Holy Trinity—is a community.) 113 Human individuals—from the Queen and
the Archbishop of Canterbury to Colonel Rainborough’s “poorest he that is in
England”—are created in the image of God and, as Justice McLean said famously,
in his dissent in the Dred Scott case, they are nobody’s chattel: each of them “bears
the impress of his maker and is destined to an endless existence.” 114
113 Rawls, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith (2010). See also JW, “Persons, Community, and the
Image of God in Rawls’s Brief Inquiry,” presented at APA December 2010, available at
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1726128
114 Dred Scott v. Sanford.
47

Compared to that, the lives of sovereign entities are like those of insects, the
flies of a summer. The image is not from Edmund Burke, but from C.S. Lewis’s
book, The Weight of Glory. Lewis gives us wonderful language to embrace the
point that, on the Christian view, human individuals are entitled to recognition as
immortals—people whose actions and whose treatment will resonate forever, long
after the empires and sovereigns that mistreated them have crumbled to dust. It is a
serious thing, said Lewis,
[t]o remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you talked to today
may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you will be strongly
tempted to worship, or else a horror in the corruption, such as you now meet,
if at all, only in your nightmares. All day long, we are in some degree
helping each other on to one of these destinations. There are no ordinary
people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts,
civilizations: these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.
But it is immortals with whom we joke, work with, marry, snub and exploit:
immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. 115
That is the Christian view of the comparison between sovereign and
individual in point of dignity—mortal functionary, on the one hand, and, on the
other hand, someone who bears the impress of his maker and is destined to an
endless existence.
I don’t claim that there is no other way of arriving at this comparison. I refer
back to what I said at the beginning of Lecture 1. We are talking here about
overlapping consensus. There are other lines of reasoning that overlaps with the
Christian conception of the overwhelming dignity of the human individual—from
the Stoic to the Kantian tradition. As I said last week, the point is not to claim
Christina insight as indispensable. It is to assure our fellow citizens that we too
can come to this point of consensus, and that the impression conveyed to the
contrary by those who corrupt their Christian moral ontology with a heretical
patriotism should be disregarded. Or rather, not disregarded, but understood in this
light: that when Christians claim (as some do, in this country) that their loyalty to
country must deafen themselves to the cries of the victims of torture and other
violations—when they claim this, they may make an exhibition of themselves as
good Americans in their denigration of internationally-recognized human rights,
but there isn’t a shred of scripture or a patch of human doctrine to support this
order of priorities.
115 CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory, 14-15.
48

Lecture 3: Wednesday, March 30, 2011
THE SOURCES OF ORDER: WHY NATURAL LAW
IS NOT ENOUGH
1. Christian positivism
We started with St. Paul in Romans 13. Let’s finish with him too. When Paul
counselled submission to the powers that be, including powers of world
government exercised from Rome, he said that rulers are a terror not to good
works, but to evil. The earthly ruler, Caesar,
is the minister of God … for good. … [I]f thou do that which is evil, be
afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: … he is … a revenger to execute
wrath upon him that doeth evil. 116
A jurisprude would say that this is the classic bet both ways—betting on positivism
and betting on natural law. Like a good positivist, Paul talks about the ruler
bearing the sword, issuing his commands, and imposing his sanctions. But like a
good natural lawyer, he says the ruler does God’s work in this, supporting the good
and punishing evil, categories that are—in the logic of Paul’s teaching here—
established by God and not by the will of man. It leaves out of the picture the
possibility that Caesar may permit what is evil, and forbid what is good or morally
necessary. It is exactly like the Blackstonian eclecticism that exasperated Jeremy
Bentham some seventeen hundred years later. Municipal law, said William
Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, is properly defined to be
“a rule of civil conduct prescribed by the supreme power in a state, commanding
what is right and prohibiting what is wrong.” 117 A rule of civil conduct prescribed
by the supreme power in a state—that’s the positivist element. Commanding what
is right and prohibiting what is wrong—that’s the element of natural law,
suggesting that civil law necessarily conforms to natural law categories of good
and evil.
Well, as I said in my first lecture, I am a sort of Christian positivist. And in
these lectures I take myself to be giving a religious account of the positive law that
operates in the international realm. Today, I am going to talk a lot about treaties,
for treaties are by far the most important positive source of international legal
obligation. But first let’s talk about natural law.
There is an old, old dispute about whether international law is composed
exclusively of positive law, based on human will and human agreement, or
116 Romans 13: 3-4.
117 Cite to Blackstone and Bentham.
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whether some of it is derived directly from (or is even identical with) the law of
nature. 118 By natural law, I mean that part of God’s law that is accessible to reason
and doesn’t require revelation. People think, for example, that the rules against
killing and torture and rape are like this: their wrongness can be figured out, from
reflection on human nature without reference to law-books, statutes, or precedents;
and without reference to Bible either. So in the international realm, the natural-law
position would be that there are certain principles that apply to states and restrict
what it is right or permissible for them to do—like the principle forbidding
aggressive war—which we can access simply by figuring things out, without
having to appeal to the text of a treaty or the content of a custom. God wills that we
should not engage in aggressive war; this is part of God’s will that we can figure
out by moral reasoning; and the conclusion applies directly as international law
without the mediation of custom, treaty, or any form of positivity.
That’s the natural law position. The title of today’s lecture suggests that I
think natural law is not enough for a working body of international law. I think
everyone agrees with that. There have to be treaties as well and there have to be
customs. But actually I want to defend a more aggressive position. I want to argue
that there is no area of international jurisprudence where natural law, standing
nakedly as such, can operate directly as law, without the mediation of treaty or
custom. And I want to argue that there is something theologically significant in
that fact.
It may seem puzzling this position is being adopted in the context of a
religious account. The idea of natural law is clearly associated with Christian
tradition, in the thinking of Thomas Aquinas and others: it is, as I said, that part of
the eternal law of God that is accessible to human reason. So surely a Christian
account would want to give greater prominence than others to natural law as a
source of international obligation. In fact many secular jurists, like Hersch
Lauterpacht, accord a significant place to natural law in international
jurisprudence. 119 They say it necessarily plays a greater role there than it does in
118 This language is taken from a characterization of the debate in Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, p. 439.
119 Lauterpacht stated: “The significance of the law of nature in [Grotius'] treatise is that it is the ever-present source
for supplementing the voluntary law of nations.” --- Lauterpact, “The Grotian Tradition in International Law, “23
British Yearbook of International Law 1, 21-22 (1946). Also Lauterpacht: “The fact is that while within the state it
is not essential to give to the ideas of a higher law-of natural law-a function superior to that of providing the
inarticulate ethical premiss underlying judicial decisions or, in the last resort, of the philosophical and political
justification of the right of resistance, in the international society the position is radically different. There-in a
society deprived of normal legislative and judicial organs—the function of natural law, whatever may be its form,
must approximate more closely to that of a direct source of law. In the absence of the overriding authority of the
judicial and legislative organs of the state there must assert itself-unless anarchy or stagnation are to ensue-the
persuasive but potent authority of reason and principle derived from the fact of the necessary coexistence of a
plurality of states. This explains the pertinacity, in the international sphere, of the idea of natural law as a legal
source.” (ibid. 22-3)
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municipal law. Lauterpacht’s saying that is not necessarily born of any religious
commitment. So if even the secular jurists can say this, isn’t there something odd
about this Christian thinker, who has been talking all week and last Wednesday too
about God’s command to order the world, refusing to countenance natural law as
the touchstone of global legality?
2. Varieties of natural law jurisprudence.
I am conscious that in this I am talking a position different from that of my
brothers and sisters in the Theology and International Law Working Group that has
been meeting at the Center for Theological Inquiry these past five years. There is
pretty much a consensus in the Working Group on natural law as a major
constituent of international law.
And it is not just the natural law of secular rationalism either—i.e., the
natural law that Grotius said in his Prolegomena we could accept even if (etiamsi)
we were to grant—what cannot be granted without the greatest wickedness—that
there is no God or that he takes no interest in human affairs. Members of the
International Law Working Group were convinced that the version of natural law
on which international law’s doctrines and authority are (partly) based is a
jurisprudence that is religious in its spirit and provenance. Even if not based
directly on revelation, it is best understood (and may be intelligible only) as a part
of God’s law, accessible to reason imbued with respect for His order—and indeed
fulfilled in the coming of Jesus of Nazareth, the “light of the nations,” in whom
God the Father has enabled humankind to share in the divine law. The group spent
a lot of time embracing a Christological account of natural law.
Well, with great respect, I don’t buy it—not the Christology (in this
context), 120 not the view that identifies global legality with natural law generally. I
am not denying the existence of natural law. Lassa Oppenheim, one of the grand
old men of international law, repudiated it. He acknowledged that international
law needed natural law as a set of trainer wheels in its infant stages. But now it has
grown up: “We know nowadays that a Law of Nature does not exist.” 121 I share
with Oppenheim an enthusiasm for “a positive Law of Nations” but not on account
of any ontological scepticism. Natural law is there, it is ordained by God, it is not
going to go away, and it helps to make sense of what we do (and what we ought to)
so far as order in the world is concerned.
120 For suspicions about the Christological aspect, consider the view of that 1854 Hulsean Lecturer from Cambridge
whom I quoted in the first of these lectures: “[O]ur Religion as it came out of the hands of its Founder and His
apostles ‘being completely abstracted from all views either of ecclesiastical or civil policy,’ can be expected to
contain but few precepts immediately applicable as maxims of international Law.” Kennedy, p. 7.
121 Oppenheim, International Law, 9 th edition, p. 92.
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It does help explain the importance of having positive law. Indeed this has
always been one of the most important things that natural law theory does. The
contribution that natural law makes to global legality is to explain the need for it to
take the form of positive law, and explain the ways in which different sources of
positive law (treaty, practice, custom, judgment) resonate with deeper moral,
spiritual and ontological concerns. (Indeed natural lawyers are usually better at
explaining the indispensability of positive law than positivists are. The latter are
afraid of seeming to be interested in any element of value when they wear their
jurisprudential fools-cap.) But it cannot apply directly, as international law,
without the mediation of treaty and custom.
Nor is my scepticism born of any realist suspicion of the idealistic character
of the aspirations of natural law. Marti Koskenniemi once wrote that international
law “should not be thought of in terms of utopian principles, emanating from God's
will.” 122 There is no reason to suppose that natural law is “utopian.” Much of the
natural law tradition is quite modest in its aspirations, not leading us on to the new
Jerusalem of peace and light, nor offering us Christ-like counsels of perfection
(which Grotius for example specifically contrasted with natural law, saying that in
the New Testament “a greater sanctity is enjoined [upon] us, than the mere Law of
Nature in itself requires”). 123 So mine is not a concern about natural law being
unrealistic. On the contrary, those who take the position I oppose, those who think
we can apply natural law precepts directly, usually do so carefully and judiciously
focusing mainly on just a few fundamental norms. But they are still wrong.
I accept that natural law furnishes a number of the substantial concepts that
positive law makes use of: human dignity, which we talked about on Monday, is a
good example, and the correlative ideas of inhumanity and degradation. The
positive laws that we have in the international realm give prominent place to this
concept, so we can’t do international positive law without engaging in moral
thinking about dignity. So any positivism here is necessarily a soft or inclusive
positivism, in Jules Coleman’s sense. 124
I accept too that natural law helps explain the limits on law in general. There
comes a point when an oppressive edict may be too unjust or too deformed in its
character to be accorded legal authority. And that will apply in the international
realm as much as in the governance of particular communities. I shall come back
to that at the very end of today’s lecture.
122 Martti Koskenniemi, "International Law in a Post-Realist Era" (1995) 16 Australian Year Book of International
Law 1, at p. 3.
123 Preliminary Discourse in Book I of The Rights of War and Peace, §51 (Liberty Fund edition, p. 126). As Robin
Lovin has said, natural law does not lead us to ultimate value: it “provides us with human goods, but not with the
Good.” (Lovin, “Natural Law and Human Goods” for CTI, Jan 24-5, 2008.)
124 Cite to Jules Coleman.
52

But let me isolate this one view that I reject: it is the view that natural law
propositions can constrain states directly in international law without the mediation
of treaty or custom. The law we apply is a law that we have to share—and the fact
is that natural law, for all that has been said so far, does not disclose itself to us on
earth in uncontroversial forms. It’s an argument I made in an essay published in a
volume edited by Robert George years ago: 125 the volume was called Natural Law
Theory: Contemporary Essays and my chapter was called “The Irrelevance of
Moral Objectivity,” (It also appeared as one of the central chapters of Law and
Disagreement.) The idea is that natural law in itself may very well be universal
and objective, it may descend from God, it may be consummated in Christ. But we
disagree on earth about what it is. And we need positive legal structures that can
supersede that disagreement and stand, clearly identified, among us.
3. Hobbes and men that mediate peace
It is not even clear what it would be for natural law to be directly operative in the
international realm. I suppose we do have the view of Thomas Hobbes, who
said—at the end of Chapter 30 of Leviathan—that “the offices of one sovereign to
another” are comprehended in the law of nature. 126 He believed that “Kings, and
Persons of Soveraigne authority” are in a state of nature which is a state of war or
potential war. They are
in the state and posture of Gladiators; having their weapons pointing, and
their eyes fixed on one another; that is, their Forts, Garrisons, and Guns
upon the Frontiers of their Kingdomes; … which is a posture of War. 127
And, Hobbes said ,
the same law that dictateth to men that have no civil government what they
ought to do, and what to avoid in regard of one another, dictateth the same to
Commonwealths; that is, to the consciences of sovereign princes and
sovereign assemblies
Unfortunately, however, there is “no court of natural justice.” And it has usually
been supposed that the Hobbesian governance of nations by natural law is really
nothing but anarchy, because it is not safe to follow any of the peaceable
recommendations of the law of nature without security, and security is just what
125 JW, “The Irrelevance of Moral Objectivity,” in Natural Law Theory: Contemporary Essays, Robert George ed.
(OUP Clarendon Press, 1992), 158.
126 Leviathan, Ch. 30. Actually he said they comprehended in the law of nations; but then he added “I need not say
anything [about that] in this place, because the law of nations and the law of nature is the same thing.” I will deal
with similar equations of these two ideas in section __, below.
127 Leviathan, Ch. 13.
53

we do not have in the state of nature. 128 No doubt, as a matter of desire, “every
man, ought to endeavour Peace.” But when he has no hope of obtaining it, “he
may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.” 129 Charles Beitz’s exploration
of this Hobbesian position in Chapters 2 and 3 of Political Theory and
International Relations is extremely helpful. 130
Of course, Hobbes’s view of what the law of nature requires is not
necessarily correct. Others have postulated a less survivalist account. (In general
we should resist the fashion of identifying the law of nature with the
pronouncements of any philosophical, scholastic or ecclesiastical authority. This is
most common in Catholic natural law theory, where invoking natural law often just
means quoting Aquinas. What a philosopher writes, even a sainted philosopher, is
not itself natural law; what it records is that philosopher’s opinion about what
natural law is (which opinion may be wrong)—a point that is probably easier for
some to accept in the case of Aquinas than it is in the case of Hobbes. But it
applies to both of them).
On the other hand, my fellow fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, Noel
Malcolm, has argued that, anyway, Hobbesian natural law is not entirely
ineffective in the international realm. 131 He cites the third Law of Nature on
Hobbes’s list—“That men performe their Covenants made.” And he points out
that, although Hobbes also said that covenants without the sword are but words, he
also believed that anyone who made an agreement in circumstances where the
other party showed himself willing to abide by it, even in a state of nature, would
be a fool not also to abide by it himself. (It is actually one of the most
philosophically interesting arguments in Leviathan.) Dr. Malcolm also mentions
other Hobbesian principles of natural law that seem to apply directly, and in their
own right. There are the principles about free trade that are discussed in The
Elements of Law, and the seventh law of nature in Leviathan, limiting the demand
for revenge and reparations. And he adds this observation:
There is something very implausible about the claim that Hobbes's laws of
nature cannot apply at the international level, given that one of them relates
directly to diplomatic practice: his fifteenth law is “That all men that
mediate Peace, be allowed safe Conduct.” … [T]he point of the inclusion of
this rule in Hobbes's list was evidently to settle the long-standing dispute
about the status of ‘ius feciale,’ the special area of international law relating
128 Hobbes, Leviathan, Chs. 14-15.
129 Ibid., Ch. 14.
130 Cite to Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations
131 Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes, pp. __.
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to envoys and mediators, by showing how the basic principle of such law
could be located within the natural law. 132
But there—right there in Malcolm’s last observation—is the rub. The “basic
principle” of the law relating to envoys and mediators can “be located in natural
law.” Fair enough. That is like saying the basic principle of the law relating to
homicide can be located within natural law. But the operation of law in the world
depends on details. We say the devil is in the details, I want to say God commands
us to attend to the details as positive law-makers. That the basic principles behind
law—national and international – are given to us in our moral thinking, is no doubt
true. But the details are all important, and they are man’s work not God’s. 133
You see, natural law in the world is never just an application of natural law
or moral ideas; it involves specification, or, as the natural lawyers called it since
Aquinas, determinatio. 134 Finnis talks about this; so does Robbie George in his
essay “Natural Law and International Order,” in his volume In Defense of Natural
Law. 135 Moral ideas do not initially present themselves in law-like form, if what we
mean by law-like is something that can really work like a law. Real-life laws are
complex bodies of articulate doctrine and technical criteria. The layman sometimes
132 In all this, Malcolm takes himself to be criticizing Beitz’s book, cited above in the last note but one. But Beitz is
addressing a well-known construct called Hobbesianism, which is not necessarily the same as Thomas Hobbes’s
own particular views.
133 For further elaboration of this theme of devils and details, think of the lines attributed to Thomas More in Robert
Bolt’s play, A Man for all Seasons:
MORE … The law, Roper, the law. I know what's legal not what's right. I'll stick to what's legal.
ROPER Then you set man's law above God's!
MORE No, far below; but let me draw your attention to a fact -- I'm not God. The currents and eddies of right and
wrong, which you find such plain sailing, I can't navigate. … But in the thickets of the law, oh, there I'm a
forester. I doubt if there's a man alive who could follow me there, thank God . . . (He says the last to
himself)
ALICE (Exasperated, pointing after RICH) While you talk, he's gone!
MORE And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
ROPER So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
MORE Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
ROPER I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
MORE (Roused and excited) Oh? (Advances on ROPER) And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned
round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? (He leaves him) This country's
planted thick with laws from coast to coast—man's laws, not God's -- and if you cut them down -- and
you're just the man to do it -- d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
(Quietly) Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.
134 Aquinas cite.
135 George, In Defense of Natural Law OUP 1999. Finnis in NLNR; JW in “Torture, Suicide and Determinatio,”
American Journal of Jurisprudence (2010).
55

complains that cases in law are won or lost on “technicalities.” But law-making is
largely a technical matter, with all sorts of devices that look counter-intuitive to the
layman but which are necessary in order to ensure administrability, in order to take
into account issues of procedure and fairness, and in order to allow any given norm
to take its place in a coherent corpus juris, the complex and multi-faceted body of
law as a whole.
So, for example, in the rule against killing, details have to be settled;
elements of the offense defined, degrees of homicide distinguished, excuses and
justifications laid out, rules of evidence stipulated, , presumptions and burdens of
proof laid down; bright lines drawn; operationalized criteria established; and so on.
As Professor Finnis has rightly observed: that is why ‘Thou shalt not kill ...’ is
“legally so defective a formulation.” 136
And so equally for Noel Malcolm’s Hobbesian example: the principle of
allowing safe conduct to men that mediate Peace. Hobbes’s 15 th principle may be
what lies behind the usages and practices of diplomacy. But what it lies behind is a
complex manifold of positions.
The idea of envoys and mediators may be given by natural law, but the
details of heraldry, diplomacy, and the safe-conduct of men that mediate peace are
highly technical and technical for a reason—namely, that they have to do their
work in an environment which ranges from suspicion, through mutual
incomprehensibility all the way to outright hostility. So we have all sorts of
technical rules about flags of truce and their color and we norms outlawing their
treacherous deployment and their perfidious violation.
For diplomacy, we have the great 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic
Relations with its details of the offering and the acceptance of diplomatic missions,
the size of missions, the niceties of diplomatic rank (ambassadors, nuncios,
internuncios, high commissioners, and so on), the status of diplomatic bags,
various forms of diplomatic immunity, the category of persona non grata, and so
on. Indeed, this convention, together with its predecessor, the Havana Convention
of 1928, does not just add detail and determination to a Hobbesian principle, but
codifies centuries of custom and practice that have been slowly and patiently
adding juridical flesh to the bare bones of natural law insight.
4. Positivism and Custom
Clear thinking about all of this is sometimes impeded by the particular
connotations that the word “positivism” has acquired in international law. It tends
to be used as a mildly derogatory term, to denote those who limit international law
to treaties and who present law in this arena as utterly the product of sovereign will
136 Finnis, NLNR, p. __
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or at best sovereign consent. 137 I don’t want to denigrate treaties—I have so much
more to say about them this afternoon—but in fact the category of positive law is
much more capacious than this. It has always included custom as well as statute in
the municipal realm—indeed it is orthodox doctrine among municipal-law
positivists that the fundamental rules of any legal system must be like customs 138 —
and custom as well as treaty in the international realm. The jurisprudence of
customary law is a fabulous topic in itself and immensely important for
understanding global legality. 139
So: we have a category of customary international law, and I also want to
argue that something like custom plays a pervasive role in understanding other
categories of international law as well.
Let’s first consider the formal category. I will focus on a well-known case
called The Paquete Habana—that’s the name of a boat—decided by the U.S.
Supreme Court in 1899. 140 The context was the American blockade of Cuba in
1898 in the Spanish-American war: two fishing vessels were seized by an
American ship, towed to Key West, and condemned to be auctioned as prizes of
war. On an appeal by the boat’s owners against condemnation, the Supreme Court
accepted that it was the custom of the world to protect coastal fishing vessels from
become prizes of war in naval warfare. The Court found indications of this
principle in the practice of various nations—Spain, Britain, France—and
diplomatic and juridical acknowledgment of it as a normative custom going back
to the time of Henry IV. Even if it was not in the strict sense immemorial, it had
grown into legal authority. Using the words of Sir James MacKintosh, the Supreme
Court observed that what may have started out simply as a humane concession to a
poor and industrious order men—coastal fisher-folk—slowly and silently
mitigating the practice of war, “has received the sanction of time, [and] is raised
from the rank of mere usage … [to] become part of the law of nations.” 141 No
doubt, over this history, it has been a fragile custom, occasionally disputed, often
honoured only in the breach. Still, the Supreme Court saw it as its task to gather
and recover the traces of this custom from historical and contemporary practice
and precedents, and to consider what juridical authority could be imputed to it in
137 Though notice Kelsen’s drift away from an initial view which held that international law was founded on pacta
sunt servanda to a later view that identifies the grundnorm of international law as acceptance.
138 Cite to Hart on secondary rules.
139 For two fine works, see Donald Kelley, The Human Measure: Social Thought in the Western Legal Tradition
(Harvard UP, 1990) and Amanda Perreau-Saussine and James Bernard Murphy, The Nature of Customary Law:
Legal, Historical and Philosophical Perspectives (CUP, 2007).
140 The Paquete Habana; The Lola, 175 U.S. 677 (1900).
141 Cite.
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light of that evidence. Maybe in some such cases, the practice is too fickle or too
widely challenged to generate a principle of the law of nations. But among sinful
and fallible humanity, no custom will ever be accepted with unanimity or followed
invariably in each situation to which it applies. Even in the midst of this
inconsistency, one sometimes finds what I called earlier a discernable pattern of
normative practice. One country in one conflict may ride roughshod over the rule
that the practice is supposed to embody. But if it does so—to some extent—
shamefacedly or if its violation is treated by other countries as a matter of
criticism, then again we seem to see some normativity emerging. And we should
take that seriously as an emergent aspect of global order.
Opinions differ among jurists as to what exactly the formal requirements are
for recognizing customary international law—the rule of recognition, if you like—
and they may differ too about whether The Paquete Habana was rightly decided.
But the importance of this category of law is denied only by those who are
impatient with every idea of order and restraint in world affairs. And from a
religious point of view, it seems to me that this mode of emerging order is
particularly significant. Human custom, emerging in the form of scattered beacons
of order amidst the sinful and chaotic practices of mankind might, in all humility,
be regarded by us as a sturdier and (based on the redemptive circumstances of its
emergence) a holier source of law than the supposedly pure insights of a sainted
natural lawyer speculating philosophically on the human condition in a way that is
closeted from the ways of the world.
5. Natural law and the law of nations
This brings me to the broader and less formal influence that custom ad practice has
in international law. Sometimes when jurists talk about natural law, what they
really seem to have in mind is not philosophical speculation of the kind that
Aquinas engaged in, but the discernment of moral observances visibly entrenched
in the practice and opinion of mankind.
I said last Wednesday, that this would not be an historical inquiry. But since
it is often said that the foundations of international law were laid in the 16 th and
17 th centuries by natural law thinkers, I think we should look carefully at the use of
that term. Sometimes what is called an inquiry into “natural law” is really an
investigation of the positive customs and practices of mankind under the heading
of the law of nations, ius gentium. Often this was regarded as a more reliable guide
to natural law than the solitary speculations of philosophers or theologians. 142
142 The paragraphs that follow are taken from Jeremy Waldron, “Ius Gentium: A Defense of Gentili's Equation of the
Law of Nations and the Law of Nature,” in The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the
Justice of Empire, Benedict Kingsbury and Benjamin Straumann eds. (OUP 2011)
58

So, for example, Alberico Gentili, writing in 1589, explicitly identified the
two concepts.
[T]hey say that the law of nations is that which is in use among all the
nations of men, which native reason has established among all human
beings, and which is equally observed by all mankind. Such a law is natural
law. “The agreement of all nations about a matter must be regarded as a law
of nature.” 143
(That last quotation is attributed by Gentili to Cicero.) According to Gentili, we
find out what the law of nations is by diligently investigating the laws and customs
that are in use in the world; we ask traders, for example, for stories about foreign
lands; or we look at history books or bible accounts. What Gentili equates with the
law of nature are the laws and customs that have seemed acceptable to all or to
most nations, laws and customs which have established themselves in the world
not necessarily all at once by any explicit convention, but nation by nation,
“successively,” coming to seem acceptable to most men. That’s how we establish
what the ius gentium is, and to the extent that international law has a natural law
component, that is often what the natural law component involves.
I don’t mean to exaggerate. Gentili’s positive inquiry into the law of
nations—conceived simply as a body of human law in the world—may certainly
also implicate an element of what we would call moral inquiry. Gentili’s position
is that we can find out what the law of nations is by inquiring into what has
become established successively as law among the different nations of the world.
The global practice we discern doesn’t have to be universal. “When one speaks of
the usage of all nations,” it doesn’t have to be read as meaning “absolutely every
nation.”
[A]s the rule of a state and the making of its laws are in the hands of
majority of its citizens, just so is the rule of the world in the hands of the
aggregation of the greater part of the world. 144
So it is a sort of majoritarian conception. This is partly because some nations
remain unknown to us, and partly because the practice of some nations may have
to be regarded as depraved outliers relative to a more general consensus. Gentili’s
analogy to the majoritarian practice of municipal law-making makes it sound as
though this could be done purely on the numbers. But this is surely not the case.
On any given topic, we may have to choose between one partial consensus and
143 The attribution is to Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, I [xiii.30].
144 Ibid., __
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another, and that choice may be guided by some independent sense of the moral
quality of the consensus.
In a stylized case, we may find that 45% of nations allow a successful siege
to end in the slaughter of a city’s defenders if they were offered, at a late stage in
the siege, an opportunity to surrender the city with impunity, while 40% of
countries may in these circumstances prohibit the slaughter of defenders who ask
for quarter after the city’s walls have been breached. Both consensuses are partial.
But we may regard the latter as the law of nations, even though it is numerically
inferior on account of its embodying a morally superior standard. We trade off the
extent of support against the moral quality of the position. At an extremity, of
course, this becomes pure natural law moralizing. But in the stylized case I have
mentioned, it is more like Rawlsian reflective equilibrium or Dworkinian
interpretation of global practice. 145
That’s Gentili in the late 16 th century. Much the same is true of Hugo
Grotius, writing a generation later. Grotius too made progress in the international
realm not by asking (as a moral philosopher might) what the natural law values and
principles are, but by asking what people have taken them to be and what they
have done in the world with the answers that they happen to have come up with.
He too was interested in the way something like positive law emerged from the
practice of nations, more particularly from those aspects of national practice where
nations could be seen to have been asking themselves scrupulously and honorably
what is right and wrong (so far as war and peace are concerned). True, his
understanding of all this was leavened by his own strong first-order moral sense
(his own direct natural law enquiries); but it was never dominated by that sense to
the exclusion of any consideration of actual practice and custom. Grotius took
practice, custom, and opinion seriously in the way that a pure natural law enquiry
cannot. And for that reason he was far better positioned to understand, from a
natural law point of view, how positive law might come into existence and flourish
in this realm.
We can reflect on all this from a jurisprudential, a moral, and a theological
perspective. Jurisprudentially, I come back to something I said in Lecture One.
Sometimes when humans are at their most ferocious and hard-hearted, they still
manage—perhaps in spite of themselves—to pay homage in their practice to
strands of normativity and restraint. It was, I said, the mission of thinkers like
Grotius and Gentili to sift through the historical evidence of war-mongering to
discern, recover, and make articulate as law, elements of restraint that were there
anyway—half-hearted, haphazard, no doubt, impure, certainly, and sometimes
insincere. Still that is how legality enters the world.
145 Rawls, TJ, __ and Dworkin, Law’s Empire, __.
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Morally, we say (as philosophers) that we value the purity of moral thought,
uncontaminated by the contingencies of history or the vagaries of human
practice. 146 But I believe there are reasons for giving the empirical or positive or
practice element a more prominent place in moral reasoning than this.
One thing is that, as we develop principles that are to be used normatively,
we want to be assured that they are viable. By that I mean that the principles can
provide a stable basis of social order and one that it is reasonable (in the sense of
not inhumanly demanding). What has actually shown itself to work in the
established laws and practices can be very important in this regard. I guess some
thought about viability (in the sense of stability or reasonableness) might be
attempted by the philosopher from his armchair: Rawls’s discussion of stability in
A Theory of Justice is rather like this. 147 But think of the circumstances that
international law sometimes has to deal with. I have in mind particularly the laws
of war, where the circumstances in which principles have to operate are quite
outside the experience of present generations of moral philosophers. If we are
trying to think about codes and principles for application in time of war, we are
thinking about situations (and pressures and fears and emotional stresses) with
which the armchair philosopher may be utterly unfamiliar. Nothing but a sensitive
account of what has actually been tried and what has actually worked in the
relevant circumstances will do. I don’t mean that the moralist must pander to the
lowest common denominator among warriors; but he must be sensitive to what
warriors have shown themselves able to bear in the way of restraint in order to
determine what the upper bound of duty should be.
More generally, we philosophers may overestimate the value of pure moral
thought or pure natural law thinking. It has not always been considered a safe way
of proceeding concerning important matters. Many thinkers have grave doubts
about isolating it entirely from a proper appreciation of historical experience. As
Edmund Burke put it,
We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of
reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the
individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and
capital of nations and of ages. 148
146 (except to the extent that empirical considerations are made relevant by principles which have been themselves
established by pure moral reason)
147 Rawls, TJ, rev. ed., p. 398 ff.
148 Burke, Reflections on Revolution in France
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Similar misgivings help explain why, for many jurists, the claim to be engaged in
natural law reasoning has so often been a cipher for exploring the law of nations. 149
They thought there were significant limits on what we can learn from “untutored
nature,” and the idea that our choices of positive law should be guided and
evaluated by moral standards that have been kept pure of any association with (or
origin out of) actually existing human legal experience—the idea that they should
be guided by natural law in that sense of extreme abstraction—struck them as
preposterous.
As for a theological perspective. If I were more skilled in pneumatology, I
would suggest that what we have, in the modest appeal to human practice, is an
appeal to the Holy Spirit as it has lived and worked among us. I would compare it
with the ay we understand the history of the church, with the experience of various
ecclesiastical forms, and the accreted layering of liturgy, phrase, and ceremony. In
both cases, we do God’s work by paying attention to the history of mankind, not by
trying to figure everything out for ourselves.
Once again I am heartened to find that I am following here a path pioneered
by Oliver O’Donovan, who talks of the consecration by God of “the time-honoured
customs and usages of states in their dealings with one another.” The role of
international law, he says, “is to help the peoples shape their common inheritance
of customary practice and universal moral conviction into a functioning
international practice. 150
6. Ius cogens norms
The contrary case, the case of pure natural law as a significant element of global
legality, is made most plausible in the case of the peremptory norms we call ius
cogens. The case is presented powerfully in a new book by Mary-Ellen O’Connell,
a member of our working group: the book is called The Power and Purpose of
International Law. Professor O’Connell concedes that “most of international law
is based on positive acts of consent.” 151 However, she notes that “positive rules are
ultimately limited by ius cogens norms.” Examples she gives include the rules
against torture, piracy, genocide, terrorism, and aggressive war; no treaty provision
is valid if appears to promote acts like these. These norms, says O’Connell,
“cannot be changed through positive law methods and must, therefore, be
explained by a theory outside the positive law. Natural law provides such a
149 See the discussion in Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, 33-7.
150 (WJ -? 218-9)
151 Many-Ellen O’Connell, The Power and Purpose of International Law: Insights from the Theory and Practice of
Enforcement (OUP 2008), p. 9
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theory.” 152 The application of ius cogens norms in international law is, therefore,
best understood as the direct application in international affairs of natural law
principles.
Mary-Ellen acknowledges that there is a problem of subjectivity: “How do
we avoid … natural law … being the subjective opinion of any one person—
scholar, judge, world leader?” 153 The text of a treaty at least is identifiable. But
natural law is problematic and controversial. “The fact that natural law is derived
from revelation and/or reason presents a problem about reaching consensus as to
what the law is, once the authority of priest or pope was lost.” 154 Mary Ellen
believes that this problem can be mitigated by the work of courts, sifting and
developing a common consensus as to what these ius cogens norms really are. 155
But of course the further we go in this direction, the more we lose touch with the
idea that natural itself operates directly in the international realm.
In fact, conventional wisdom in international law does not identify ius
cogens norms with natural law. According to Marti Koskenniemi,
[a] norm is jus cogens, we think, not because it was so decreed by God, or
because according to this or that theory it is necessary for the survival of the
human species. It is jus cogens if and inasmuch as, to quote Article 53 of the
Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, it “is a norm accepted and
recognised by the international community of States as a whole.”’ Jus
cogens, like any other norm, emerges from social life, the observable
interaction between States, the meeting of their wills and interests. 156
Even Jean Porter, O’Connell’s colleague at Notre Dame, in her new book,
Ministers of the Law, which makes a strong case for natural law reasoning,
recognizes the importance of a sort of dialogue back and forth between custom and
direct moral insight. Though she insists, with O’Connell, that “the common
consent of humanity [can] not do away with fundamental rights, or sanitize certain
kinds of atrocious conduct,” 157 she accepts that the basic principles that are
involved here “are necessarily specified to some degree through the generally
152 Ibid., 132.
153 Ibid., 132.
154 Ibid., 137.
155 She says, of “[t]he move to courts to ascertain international law’s higher principles,” that “[s]tates and
organizations have established courts for decision-making and empowered them to decide” (138-9), and she cites
the transparency of their reasoning as a way of avoiding “[o]verly subjective decision-making” (139).
156 Martti Koskenniemi, “International Law in a Post-Realist Era,” (1995) 16 Australian Year Book of International
Law 1, at p. 3.
157 Porter, Ministers of the Law, p. 343.
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accepted customary practices of the nations.” 158 In this sense “the law of nations is
a product of human reflection, and thus not, strictly speaking, pre-conventional, as
the natural law properly so-called is,” 159 or as she also puts it, “the authority of
international law … reflects the authority of humanity as articulated through an ongoing
history.” 160 But still the norms that grow up amongst us in this ay come to
have some of the force that natural law norms would have if they did apply
directly: “[N]ow that these norms are, so to speak, in the possession of the human
race, we can no longer consider them to be justifiable or reversible through any
sound, normatively defensible procedures.” 161
I know that Mary Ellen O’Connell and others want to reserve some space in
international law that is not just about treaties, and the power of their conception of
ius cogens norms as natural law is a tribute to the depth of that concern. But what
worries me about the position is the implicit assumption that there is something
unworthy about a jurisprudence based positively on treaties, on such voluntary
undertakings as sovereigns have chosen in their discretion to give to the
international community. That’s just contract, is what people seem to be saying
here. The assumption seems to be that in a religious account of international law,
we ought to be looking for something more elevated. But this may be a mistake,
and for the last twenty minutes of the lecture, I want to talk in unapologetically
religious terms about the sacredness of treaties.
7. The sacredness of treaties
One initial point to get out of the way. Natural lawyers often point to the very
principle of treaties—pacta sunt servanda— as evidence of natural law’s pervasive
force in international obligation. The positive terms of treaties may generate
particular obligations but, they say, the very idea of this sort of obligation seems to
be a natural law principle. This is half right. Certainly pacta sunt servanda can be
seen as a normative proposition of natural law. But it plays the role it does in
international jurisprudence because of its wide acceptance among sovereigns.
What might have been established in the world was a destructive principle that
although promises bind ordinary mortals, they don’t bind sovereigns, because
sovereigns have responsibilities that cannot be limited in this way. Or a principle
might have gotten itself established—the popes tried to secure it for centuries—
that faith need not be kept with infidels or heretics. But the principle that in fact
got accepted was the general and largely unqualified principle of treaty-keeping,
158 Ibid., 345.
159 Ibid.
160 Ibid., 342.
161 Ibid., 349.
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and it is the fact of its broad and emergent acceptance in the affairs of mankind that
underpins our respect now for treaties, not the bare natural law principle.
So let’s talk about treaties and how we secure them. Are treaties just
bargains, just contracts? Alexander Hamilton seemed to think so: he defined
treaties in The Federalist Papers as “contracts with foreign nations, which have the
force of law, but derive it from the obligations of good faith.” 162 Wel, the wisdom
of international jurisprudence has tended to associate with treaty obligations a
force that goes well beyond the ordinary sanctity of contracts. WE don’t go to war
for breach of contract. A contract-breaker may acquire the reputation of a dedbeat
and lose his credit; but he doesn’t become humanis hostis generis, an enemy of
mankind. I am thinking of this passage from Vattel’s The Law of Nations:
As all nations are interested in maintaining the faith of treaties, and causing
it to be everywhere considered as sacred and inviolable, so likewise they are
justif[ied] in forming a confederacy for the purpose of repressing him who
testifies a disregard for it—who openly sports with it—who violates and
tramples it under foot. Such a man is a public enemy who saps the
foundations of the peace and common safety of nations"
Though we use this hackneyed term “sanctity” indifferently for both contracts and
treaties, there is a seriousness to its use in international law that goes way beyond
what it evokes in the municipal law of contract. In a way we have to get this much
more serious about faith being kept between nations, precisely because we lack
ordinary means of enforcement. In other words it is particularly in the realm of
international relations that elements of the sacred tend to persist, precisely because
“it is in this realm … that adequate legal procedures …for enforcing promises are
most difficult to find.” 163
It is worth considering the actual practices of sanctification that treaties and
treaty-making in our tradition have involved. Until relatively recently, treaties
between nations—especially important ones--were accompanied by oaths and laid
upon altars so that, in the words of Charles Kennedy, in his 1854 Hulsean Lecture,
“a religious obligation to their observance was added to the moral duty of
truthfulness,” an obligation which the Catholic Church often enhanced by holding
out the penalty of excommunication against those who refused to comply.” 164 They
were often prefaced by invocations to the almighty. For example, in the Peace of
Westphalia, the Treaty of Münster (a Peace Treaty between the Holy Roman
Emperor and the King of France and their respective allies), began “In the name of
162 Federalist # 75.
163 Who is this?
164 Kennedy, cited in Lecture One, p. 75.
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the most holy and individual Trinity…” and so does the Treaty of Osnabrück
(between Emperor Ferdinand III and Queen Christina of Sweden and their
respective allies). It began in the same way, and went on:
In the Name of the most Holy and Indivisible Trinity. Amen … the
ambassadors and plenipotentiaries of both sides appeared at the established
time and place. … Having prayed for God’s help and duly exchanged their
credentials …, for the glory of God and the security of Christendom, [they
have] agreed to the following articles of peace and friendship.
In ancient history: “religious rites [were] the cardinal feature of [the]
conclusion” of treaties. 165 Among the Romans, for example, “sacramental forms
were absolutely necessary for their validity.” 166 Scholars have speculated that “the
impressive ceremonies performed for the faithful execution of treaties, the solemn
oath taken by … the Consuls; the deposit of the instruments in the sacred temple of
Jupiter at the Capitol,”—all this was intended to have “a powerful influence on the
minds of the Roman people.” 167 And that’s an important point: the aim was to
impress not just the high contracting parties with the seriousness of the business,
but also their people, who might otherwise be tempted to pressure their leaders for
the repudiation of the treaty. The provisions for temple deposit were particularly
important: the treaty was placed into the most sacred shrines of the chief gods of
the two lands involved so that the gods themselves could read it and be reminded
from time to time of the provisions of the oath sworn in their presence. 168
These elements of ceremonial are particularly visible in biblical
covenanting—both between God and man and between Israel and other nations—
described in the Old Testament. Think of the sacrificial from of God’s covenant
with Abram in Genesis 15-17. The Lord promised Abram the land “from the river
of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates,” and Abram asked for some
assurance, particularly because God was saying this was going to happen only after
a nightmare of generations of servitude. “How can I be sure this will happen?”
Here’s how the Lord signalled this assurance:
He said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of
three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young
165 Theodore P. Ion, “Sanctity of Treaties” Yale Law Journal, 20 (1911) 268. For a seminal account, see
166 In Aeneas’ treaty with Latinus, Latinus swore: “by Earth, Sea, Sky, and the twin brood of Laton and Janus the
double-facing, and the might of the nether gods and grim Pluto’s shrine; this let our father [Jupiter] hear, who seals
treaties with his thunderbolt. I touch the altars, I take to witness the fires and the gods between us; no time shall
break this peace and truce in Italy, howsoever fortune fall; nor shall any force turn my will aside, not if it dissolve
land into water in turmoil of deluge, or melt heaven in hell.” (Bederman in Janis, p. 14)
167 Ibid. [??], pp. 269-70
168 Delbert R. Hillers, Covenant: The History of a Biblical Idea 6 (1969).
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pigeon. And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and
laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not. And when
the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away. And
when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an
horror of great darkness fell upon him. And it came to pass, that, when the
sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning
lamp that passed between those pieces.
We can barely begin to grasp the elements of archaic sanctification here.
Human covenants often involved livestock. The treaty between Abraham
and Abimelech, King of the Philistines, in Genesis 21, involved the transfer of
livestock, as well as the digging of wells, planting of groves. There was often
ceremony to associate a sense of place with the making of treaties: something that
we still observe by citing treaties by the place they were made. So the treaty
between Jacob and Laban the Syrian in Genesis 31 involved setting up of
permanent cairns of stones:
[C]ome thou, let us make a covenant, I and thou. … And Jacob said unto his
brethren, Gather stones; and they took stones, and made an heap: and they
did eat there upon the heap. …And Jacob said, This heap is a witness
between me and thee this day. … The Lord watch between me and thee,
when we are absent one from another. … And Laban said to Jacob, Behold
this heap, and behold this pillar, which I have cast betwixt me and thee: this
heap be witness, and this pillar be witness, that I will not pass over this heap
to thee, and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me, for
harm. The God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor, the God of their father,
judge betwixt us. 169
Or consider the use of stones as a witness of covenant in Joshua 24: “So Joshua
made a covenant with the people that day … and took a great stone, and set it up
there under an oak, that was by the sanctuary of the Lord. And Joshua said unto all
the people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us; for it hath heard all the
words of the Lord which he spake unto us: it shall be therefore a witness unto you,
lest ye deny your God.” 170
All this was matched with a terrifying sense of divine punishment for treatybreaking—the
choicest biblical example of which is the curse upon Edom (a
kingdom of southern Jordan) for breaking its treaty with Judah, set out by Isaiah. It
goes on for a whole hideous chapter, with people being delivered to the slaughter:
169 Genesis 31: 44ff.
170 Joshua 24: 25-27
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[A] sword …. bathed in heaven … shall come down upon … the people of
my curse….Their slain … shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out
of their carcases, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. … And
the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust … into brimstone.
And on and on. But there’s a point here also that David Bederman makes—
Bederman is the author of International Law in the Ancient World—which is that
the content of these curses and the conditional self-cursing embodied in oaths (a
sort of liquidate damages clause) reflects not just a need for sanctions, but also a
primal fear of desolation and chaos. Human covenant and human fidelity are all
that lie between us and an utterly disordered world. 171 The terrible retribution
wrought upon Edom is effectively the break-up of all order on which it and other
nations depended: “from generation to generation [Edom] shall lie waste; none
shall pass through it for ever and ever. … and [the Lord] shall stretch out upon it
the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.”
On Monday, I promised you not just Abram but Nietzsche. A lot of this is
reminiscent of Nietzsche’s discussion at the beginning of the Second Essay of his
book The Genealogy of Morals, of what was necessary to breed among humanity
“an animal that is entitled to make promises,” to bring into being a person with a
memory, who can remember and stand by what he promised, someone
who [can make] promises like a sovereign, seriously, rarely, and slowly,
who is sparing with his trust, who honours another when he does trust, who
gives his word as something reliable, because he knows he is strong enough
to remain upright even when opposed by misfortune…. 172
And Nietzsche went on to say that “there is perhaps nothing more fearful and more
terrible in the entire prehistory of human beings than the technique for developing
his memory” and his promise-keeping:
We burn something in so that it remains in the memory. … When the human
being considered it necessary to make a memory for himself, it never
happened without blood, the most terrible sacrifices and pledges …, the
most repulsive self-mutilations … , the cruellest forms of ritual in all the
religious cults. 173
Well, as the modern era dawned, sacrament and invocation died away. But
the sacramental aspect was still taken seriously by some of those we entered into
treaties with. Among indigenous peoples, e.g. native Americans: “Many tribes
171 Bederman in Janis, p. 21.
172 Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, §§1-2.
173 Ibid., §3.
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solemnized treaty agreements with rituals including gift-giving, smoking a sacred
pipe, historical orations, and naming ceremonies.” 174 And they tended to reproach
the white man for taking so lightly what for them were such solemn undertakings. I
mean things like the Cherokee address to Congress of 1871, as the lands promised
to them were taken:
In our ignorance we have supposed that Treaties were contracts entered into
under the most solemn forms, and the most sacred pledges of human faith,
and that they could be abrogated only by mutual consent. We are now taught
differently.
Something sacred is taken away, but something worldly is lost with it.
Emeric Vattel, writing in the eighteenth century, considered that oaths—
which by then had become what George Meldenhall called an “ancient ruin still
standing”—were no longer important for treaty-making. They were
supererogatory. An oath is personal, but a treaty survives death of him who made
it. 175 Vattel had a pragmatic reason for trying to persuade us to minimize the
element of oath-making:
The custom generally received in former times, of swearing to the
observance of treaties, had furnished the popes with a pretext for claiming
the power of breaking them, by absolving the contracting parties from their
oaths. 176
So we no longer invoke the holy trinity, or threaten divine havoc, or light
fires or split heifers or build cairns at the places where treaties are concluded. But
we still talk about solemn treaties and covenants. And Nietzsche is right:
everywhere on earth nowadays where there is still solemnity, something of
the terror continues its work, the fear with which in earlier times everywhere
on earth people made promises, pledged their word, made a vow. The past,
the longest, deepest, most severe past, breathes on us and surfaces in us
when we become “solemn.” 177
We live in a disenchanted world. Treaty making is just like contract. No
doubt. But we know some contracts are more momentous than others. Sometimes
we just check a little box in an internet transaction. But sometimes our contracts
can transform our situation permanently and comprehensively, which is why we
174 Kristen A. Carpenter, “Interpretive Sovereignty: A Research Agenda,” American Indian Law Review, 33 (2008-
9), 111
175 Vattel Bk. 2, § 226.
176 Ibid., § 225.
177 Genealogy §3
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still associate some contracts with changes of status—marriage, for example—and
subject them to the special supervision of the law. We even consecrate then—or
some of them—on the altars of our faith.
Treaty-making is just a form of law-making. No doubt. But again, some
laws are more momentous than others. Some are like temporary decrees; others
are more like constitutions that have to be built strong enough to endure for
generations. And perhaps some treaties—like the great human rights covenants—
take on the same aspect of “scared text” as constitutions do. With a constitution,
its power among us, its sanctity, is partly a function of how much went into the
making of it and how much was at stake: the creation of something legal, a
legalized political order, out of nothing. The same sense of what is at stake may be
important for treaties also. The great nineteenth century jurist James Lorimer put it
this way:
The greater treaties are justly regarded as summing up the international
experience of the epochs of history to which they belong: and when we
consider the frightful cost at which they were purchased, it would be sad
indeed if they taught us nothing. To regard them simply as monuments of
objectless effort and fruitless suffering would be to disbelieve in the wisdom
not of man but of God. 178
I talked in my first lecture, about public reason about our ability if we strain
and listen to ancient texts and religious creeds and doctrines—to distil and translate
things of importance from theistic traditions that we (or that you) may not
necessary still accept. So the biblical tradition warns us to pay solemn attention to
the chaos and desolation of a world without good faith, a world where treaties are
entered into lightly and discarded wilfully. We may not look for the destruction of
Edom, but the biblical tradition may still give us pause, give a deeper sense to what
might otherwise appear to be the rather bland words of Vattel that
There would be no longer any security among men, nor any intercourse
possible, if they did not consider themselves bound to keep faith with each
other and stand by their word. 179
Or: “the Lord shall stretch out upon us the line of confusion, and the stones of
emptiness.” Take your pick.
So there is this alternative to a preoccupation with natural law. We can pay
attention also to God’s sanctification or our consecration of positive law, of the
solemnity of treaties, the authority of covenants, the endurance of custom against
178 James Lorimer, The Institutes of the Law of Nations, I, p. 39.
179 (II, xii, §163)
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all the odds. We shouldn’t assume that the sacred and the religious go out the
window when positivism is in the air.
11. Respect for law in the midst of disagreement
I want to finish with one function of natural law that I do recognise. Natural law,
as I said at the beginning, may tell us a little about the limits of international law’s
claims upon us.
In the discussion at the end of Lecture One, George Kateb emphasized that
not every barbaric edict issued by a tyrant in possession of the apparatus of power
counts as law or has the authority of law. There comes a point when an oppressive
edict may be too unjust or too deformed in its character to be accorded legal
authority. And that will apply in the international realm as much as in the
governance of particular communities.
This may be particularly important in cases where international law seems to
prohibit doing what justice and morality urgently require—coming to the aid of a
people who are being slaughtered without mercy, for example. The point is
important and George was right to reproach me for neglecting it. I hadn’t wanted to
linger on such pathological cases, terrible though they may be. I took as my
subject for these lectures the normality, not the pathology of international law: the
sanctity of business as usual.
Let me explain, using an analogy with national law. We know that, as a
result of ordinary political life, values are often enacted into national law which are
not our values. National law does some things which we (some of us) think it
ought not to do, and it leaves undone some things which some of us think it ought
to have done. This disagreement about content is part of the normal life of national
law, whether it is taxes, criminal law, welfare, commerce, or property. And
everyone has to come to terms with it. We share a national legal system wt people
with whom, in good faith, we disagree on these matters of policy, right and justice.
And still law has to have a univocal place among us.
Now Christian thinking has certainly been important for helping us develop
our various ideas about content: what law ought to be, the principles it ought to
embody and the values it ought to serve. It is clear though that Christians do
disagree both among themselves and with their fellow citizens on many of these
issues. So, in addition, we have developed a Christian attitude which accords
some respect to law and the Rule of Law, as such, quite apart from our opinions or
views about its content. We say, sometimes, that the law commands our respect
and compliance even when we disagree with its content, even when we wish its
content were otherwise. And we develop theories which explain that requirement
of respect and compliance—theories which represent Christian views on the Rule
of Law as such. That’s the force of Romans 13: submit yourselves to the powers
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that be, whether or not they are doing exactly what you would do if you were in
charge.
Few Christians would take the view that the duty of respect or compliance
for national law is unlimited. Most of us would hold something like a theory of
natural law which says that certain so-called human laws may be so abominable in
their requirements, so offensive to human dignity or to religion as to forfeit all
claim to general respect and compliance. And we develop theories of civil
disobedience and Christian resistance for these cases. But we do not take this view
of each and every law that we disagree with, because we understand that we share
the realm of law with persons, enfranchised just like us, who in good faith take the
opposite view. Some laws we put up with and even respect, even though we
disagree. So: respect for law as such, operates in a middle realm between (i) the
area where law exactly coincides with one’s own values and (ii) the area where law
becomes some abominable as to forfeit all our support.
Well, likewise, I think we need an understanding of international law which
can also occupy that intermediate space and use it to inform our thinking about
global legality and the ordering of the world. Of course we have our ideals for
international law, and it is an important part of Christian jurisprudence to
contribute to the articulation of those ideals: human dignity, peace, international
aid, compassion for the poorer nations, and so on. And certainly we also can
imagine that what presents itself as international ordering may be so destructive of
important values that it forfeits all title to our respect; and we expect a Christian
theory of natural law to help us understand when it would be appropriate for a
Christian nation to reject it and resist it on that basis. But above all, we want to
develop a Christian understanding of international law for the middle area: the area
where the international ordering has some claim to our respect—simply as an
ordering—even though its content doesn’t necessarily coincide with our ideals.
After all, we share the world with 200 other nations and six billion other
opinionated individuals. So that is what I have been trying to do – to understand
from a Christian perspective the claim that international law has upon us as such,
apart from the claims of its particular content.
That’s all I want to say, except for two things. I want to thank you for your
attention over three long lectures. And I want to finish with the words that Hugo
Grotius used to end the Prolegomena to his great treatise on The Laws of War and
Peace:
So now if anything has been here said by me inconsistent with piety, with
good morals, with Holy Writ, with the concord of the Christian Church, or
with any aspect of truth, let it be as if unsaid.
72

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Attachment C
The Functions of Religion
in The International Legal System
Page 93 of 119

The Functions of Religion in the International Legal System
by James A. R. Nafziger
© Mark W. Janis & Carolyn Evans (ed.), RELIGION AND INTERNATIONAL LAW (1999)
at 159–165 (footnotes omitted)
Religion and international law often appear to be congruent. They share elements of ritual,
tradition, authority and universality that “connect the legal order of any given legal society with
that society’s beliefs in an ultimate transcendent reality.” There is, too, a certain sanctity to any
body of law, just as there is an authoritative and often constitutive structure in religion. Judaism
is based on a covenant. In Martin Buber’s terminology of I and Thou, both religion and
international law are essentially dialogue; both seek to prove orientation of knowledge and a
greater realization of the meaning of life. In a sense, the whole concept and practice of global
order presupposes a moral and teleological viewpoint that is essentially religious. United Nations
Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar has referred to the U.N. Charter as “my religion.” ...
As ethical systems, both law and religion address the global order in a profound manner; both are
concerned with the manner in which we accept and organize the world and universe around us.
Sometimes, however, religion and positive international law are anything but congruent.
They may even be in conflict. For example, prohibitions on whaling by national and international
agencies, for the best of environmental reasons may conflict with indigenous religious practices.
Prescriptions to protect the rights of women, such as those that were developed and codified in
the Convention Against the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, have
been rejected by some Islamic traditions.
. . .
Integration of law and religion can, of course, result by definition whenever religious
institutions or ideas are deliberately made the subject of international prescription. Examples
include the Lateran Treaty between Italy and the Vatican ... and the recognition of the Vatican as
a state. ‘Right to life’ provisions in human rights instruments that are intended or interpreted to
prohibit abortion have religious foundations. An extraordinarily inflammatory issue was the
[1975] ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution of the United Nations General Assembly....
Several global instruments articulate a fundamental freedom of thought, conscience and religion
... [including] the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, and the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance
and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. Regional conventions and accords contain
similar provisions. Other human rights agreements protecting religious freedoms include the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the Convention
Relating to the Status of Refugees. These provisions highlight the topic of religion’s role in the
international legal system.
. . .
Religious institutions and doctrine have helped shape and develop modern international
law. Certain denominations—for example, the Society of Friends (Quakers), the Brethren in
Christ (Mennonites), the Church of the Brethren, the United Society of Believers in Christ’s
Reprinted with permission of Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
1

Second Appearing (Shakers), and the Bahá’í Faith—have accorded a central role to peace and
the development of global order.... Many other denominations and such ecumenical institutions
as the World Council of Churches (WCC), influenced by Third World churches, actively pursue
programs for the progressive development and implementation of international law....
Religious groups may sometimes be inhibited from active participation in the
development of global order because of their disassociation from any politically related
institutions, as international law and legal institutions may be viewed. Conversely, some groups
may be motivated to create and help implement international law precisely because the latter
does have political implication that symbolize a constraint on secular, fractious sovereignty and a
cosmopolitan expression of the limits of sovereign authority. ... On the one hand, Shiite belief
deliberately merges religion and the state, and Latin American liberation theology joins forces
with Marxist and other political movements in exercising a ‘preferential option for the poor.’ On
the other hand, some (but not all) Western versions of evangelism tend to be distinctly
Separationist in order to protect their cherished civil liberties.
. . .
So far in attempts to understand the historic role of religion in shaping modern international law,
the message seems to be that international law did not replace the old time religion, as
conventional learning implies, but entered into a continuous dialectical interdependence with
religion.
... Rules and principles of international extradition appear to have originated in sanctified
delivery of criminals, “bound up in solemn religious formulas,” practiced by ancient Chaldeans,
Egyptians and Chinese. The doctrine and practice of asylum—a “right of sanctuary” blessed by
the medieval church—is rooted in ancient Greece. Gandhi’s Hindu strategy of satyagraha
(passive resistance) helped define principles of self-determination and peaceful resolution of
conflict in the modern world, and Confucian ideology has encouraged the growth of non-litigory
methods for resolving international commercial disputes.
. . .
Even after fragmentation of medieval Christendom and the emergence of the nation-state
system after the [Protestant] Reformation, the medieval concept of a universal law continued to
encourage cosmopolitanism among Roma Catholic sovereigns. Legal thinking in the Protestant
states that emerged from the Reformation concurred in formulating and applying legal rules that
would transcend the State and conform with religious thinking. The Protestant perspective of
Grotius and his contemporaries and his contemporaries and disciples included the idea of
brotherhood and universal love based on natural law that was stoic-Christian in origin but secular
in expression. Within the essentially Roman law framework of the new states, accepting a
secular definition of natural law with Christian roots inspired greater respect for codifying extant
community practices.
. . .
Several examples of specific doctrinal contributions ... may help confirm the creative
function of religious doctrine in the formulation of modern international law. At a very deep
level of significance, there seem to be certain universal, religious doctrine in the formulation of
modern international law.... For example ... all of the major religions propound a Golden Rule—
treat others as you would like to be treated—that is the basis of reciprocity ... that has shaped
humanitarian legal doctrine. Personal redemption by acceptance ... may help explain
“positivism’s preoccupation with consent” [e.g., a treaty-based agreement or that a State cannot
be forced to appear before the International Court of Justice without its consent]; and the rules
2

and principles of state succession may be rooted in the historic need of a religiously defined
polity to attribute an implied choice of permanent exclusion to an untolerated ethnic order or
other excluded group. International environmental law is rooted in the basic Judeo-Christian
values, as is the concept of a ‘common heritage of mankind,’ which has at times influenced
international environmental law, the law of the sea, cultural property law, the law of outer space
and the legal status of Antarctica.
. . .
One of the most important contributions of religious thinking to international law is the
doctrine of a just war. It has proven to be endlessly controversial ... but endlessly durable as well.
. . .
In the nuclear era, the [just war] doctrine has proven to be particularly uncertain. Some
would argue that it has been superseded by Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter
[prohibiting the aggressive use of force] and more recent, cognate formulations of customary ...
law. These publicists recognize that although some use of military force is acceptable, the
exception to non-use must be premised on not the requirement of justice but rather on the
defense of peace and opposition to aggression. It is now said the Charter “clearly favors peace
over justice.”
. . .
3

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Advocacy Foundation Publishers
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Advocacy Foundation Publishers
The e-Advocate Quarterly
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Issue Title Quarterly
Vol. I 2015 The Fundamentals
I
The ComeUnity ReEngineering
Project Initiative
Q-1 2015
II The Adolescent Law Group Q-2 2015
III
Landmark Cases in US
Juvenile Justice (PA)
Q-3 2015
IV The First Amendment Project Q-4 2015
Vol. II 2016 Strategic Development
V The Fourth Amendment Project Q-1 2016
VI
Landmark Cases in US
Juvenile Justice (NJ)
Q-2 2016
VII Youth Court Q-3 2016
VIII
The Economic Consequences of Legal
Decision-Making
Q-4 2016
Vol. III 2017 Sustainability
IX The Sixth Amendment Project Q-1 2017
X
The Theological Foundations of
US Law & Government
Q-2 2017
XI The Eighth Amendment Project Q-3 2017
XII
The EB-5 Investor
Immigration Project*
Q-4 2017
Vol. IV 2018 Collaboration
XIII Strategic Planning Q-1 2018
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The Juvenile Justice
Legislative Reform Initiative
Q-2 2018
XV The Advocacy Foundation Coalition Q-3 2018
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XVI
for Drug-Free Communities
Landmark Cases in US
Juvenile Justice (GA)
Q-4 2018
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Issue Title Quarterly
Vol. V 2019 Organizational Development
XVII The Board of Directors Q-1 2019
XVIII The Inner Circle Q-2 2019
XIX Staff & Management Q-3 2019
XX Succession Planning Q-4 2019
XXI The Budget* Bonus #1
XXII Data-Driven Resource Allocation* Bonus #2
Vol. VI 2020 Missions
XXIII Critical Thinking Q-1 2020
XXIV
The Advocacy Foundation
Endowments Initiative Project
Q-2 2020
XXV International Labor Relations Q-3 2020
XXVI Immigration Q-4 2020
Vol. VII 2021 Community Engagement
XXVII
The 21 st Century Charter Schools
Initiative
Q-1 2021
XXVIII The All-Sports Ministry @ ... Q-2 2021
XXIX Lobbying for Nonprofits Q-3 2021
XXX
XXXI
Advocacy Foundation Missions -
Domestic
Advocacy Foundation Missions -
International
Q-4 2021
Bonus
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Vol. VIII
2022 ComeUnity ReEngineering
XXXII
The Creative & Fine Arts Ministry
@ The Foundation
Q-1 2022
XXXIII The Advisory Council & Committees Q-2 2022
XXXIV
The Theological Origins
of Contemporary Judicial Process
Q-3 2022
XXXV The Second Chance Ministry @ ... Q-4 2022
Vol. IX 2023 Legal Reformation
XXXVI The Fifth Amendment Project Q-1 2023
XXXVII The Judicial Re-Engineering Initiative Q-2 2023
XXXVIII
The Inner-Cities Strategic
Revitalization Initiative
Q-3 2023
XXXVIX Habeas Corpus Q-4 2023
Vol. X 2024 ComeUnity Development
XXXVX
The Inner-City Strategic
Revitalization Plan
Q-1 2024
XXXVXI The Mentoring Initiative Q-2 2024
XXXVXII The Violence Prevention Framework Q-3 2024
XXXVXIII The Fatherhood Initiative Q-4 2024
Vol. XI 2025 Public Interest
XXXVXIV Public Interest Law Q-1 2025
L (50) Spiritual Resource Development Q-2 2025
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LI
Nonprofit Confidentiality
In The Age of Big Data
Q-3 2025
LII Interpreting The Facts Q-4 2025
Vol. XII 2026 Poverty In America
LIII
American Poverty
In The New Millennium
Q-1 2026
LIV Outcome-Based Thinking Q-2 2026
LV Transformational Social Leadership Q-3 2026
LVI The Cycle of Poverty Q-4 2026
Vol. XIII 2027 Raising Awareness
LVII ReEngineering Juvenile Justice Q-1 2027
LVIII Corporations Q-2 2027
LVIX The Prison Industrial Complex Q-3 2027
LX Restoration of Rights Q-4 2027
Vol. XIV 2028 Culturally Relevant Programming
LXI Community Culture Q-1 2028
LXII Corporate Culture Q-2 2028
LXIII Strategic Cultural Planning Q-3 2028
LXIV
The Cross-Sector/ Coordinated
Service Approach to Delinquency
Prevention
Q-4 2028
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Vol. XV 2029 Inner-Cities Revitalization
LXIV
LXV
LXVI
Part I – Strategic Housing
Revitalization
(The Twenty Percent Profit Margin)
Part II – Jobs Training, Educational
Redevelopment
and Economic Empowerment
Part III - Financial Literacy
and Sustainability
Q-1 2029
Q-2 2029
Q-3 2029
LXVII Part IV – Solutions for Homelessness Q-4 2029
LXVIII
The Strategic Home Mortgage
Initiative
Bonus
Vol. XVI 2030 Sustainability
LXVIII Social Program Sustainability Q-1 2030
LXIX
The Advocacy Foundation
Endowments Initiative
Q-2 2030
LXX Capital Gains Q-3 2030
LXXI Sustainability Investments Q-4 2030
Vol. XVII 2031 The Justice Series
LXXII Distributive Justice Q-1 2031
LXXIII Retributive Justice Q-2 2031
LXXIV Procedural Justice Q-3 2031
LXXV (75) Restorative Justice Q-4 2031
LXXVI Unjust Legal Reasoning Bonus
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Vol. XVIII 2032 Public Policy
LXXVII Public Interest Law Q-1 2032
LXXVIII Reforming Public Policy Q-2 2032
LXXVIX ... Q-3 2032
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The e-Advocate Monthly Review
2018
Transformational Problem Solving January 2018
The Advocacy Foundation February 2018
Opioid Initiative
Native-American Youth March 2018
In the Juvenile Justice System
Barriers to Reducing Confinement April 2018
Latino and Hispanic Youth May 2018
In the Juvenile Justice System
Social Entrepreneurship June 2018
The Economic Consequences of
Homelessness in America S.Ed – June 2018
African-American Youth July 2018
In the Juvenile Justice System
Gang Deconstruction August 2018
Social Impact Investing September 2018
Opportunity Youth: October 2018
Disenfranchised Young People
The Economic Impact of Social November 2018
of Social Programs Development
Gun Control December 2018
2019
The U.S. Stock Market January 2019
Prison-Based Gerrymandering February 2019
Literacy-Based Prison Construction March 2019
Children of Incarcerated Parents April 2019
Page 104 of 119

African-American Youth in The May 2019
Juvenile Justice System
Racial Profiling June 2019
Mass Collaboration July 2019
Concentrated Poverty August 2019
De-Industrialization September 2019
Overcoming Dyslexia October 2019
Overcoming Attention Deficit November 2019
The Gift of Adversity December 2019
2020
The Gift of Hypersensitivity January 2020
The Gift of Introspection February 2020
The Gift of Introversion March 2020
The Gift of Spirituality April 2020
The Gift of Transformation May 2020
Property Acquisition for
Organizational Sustainability June 2020
Investing for Organizational
Sustainability July 2020
Biblical Law & Justice TLFA August 2020
Gentrification AF September 2020
Environmental Racism NpA October 2020
Law for The Poor AF November 2020
…
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2021
Biblically Responsible Investing TLFA – January 2021
International Criminal Procedure LMI – February 2021
Spiritual Rights TLFA – March 2021
The Theology of Missions TLFA – April 2021
Legal Evangelism, Intelligence,
Reconnaissance & Missions LMI – May 2021
…
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The e-Advocate Quarterly
Special Editions
Crowdfunding Winter-Spring 2017
Social Media for Nonprofits October 2017
Mass Media for Nonprofits November 2017
The Opioid Crisis in America: January 2018
Issues in Pain Management
The Opioid Crisis in America: February 2018
The Drug Culture in the U.S.
The Opioid Crisis in America: March 2018
Drug Abuse Among Veterans
The Opioid Crisis in America: April 2018
Drug Abuse Among America’s
Teens
The Opioid Crisis in America: May 2018
Alcoholism
The Economic Consequences of June 2018
Homelessness in The US
The Economic Consequences of July 2018
Opioid Addiction in America
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The e-Advocate Journal
of Theological Jurisprudence
Vol. I - 2017
The Theological Origins of Contemporary Judicial Process
Scriptural Application to The Model Criminal Code
Scriptural Application for Tort Reform
Scriptural Application to Juvenile Justice Reformation
Vol. II - 2018
Scriptural Application for The Canons of Ethics
Scriptural Application to Contracts Reform
& The Uniform Commercial Code
Scriptural Application to The Law of Property
Scriptural Application to The Law of Evidence
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Legal Missions International
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Issue Title Quarterly
Vol. I 2015
I
II
God’s Will and The 21 st Century
Democratic Process
The Community
Engagement Strategy
Q-1 2015
Q-2 2015
III Foreign Policy Q-3 2015
IV
Public Interest Law
in The New Millennium
Q-4 2015
Vol. II 2016
V Ethiopia Q-1 2016
VI Zimbabwe Q-2 2016
VII Jamaica Q-3 2016
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Vol. III 2017
IX India Q-1 2017
X Suriname Q-2 2017
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Vol. IV 2018
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XIV Guinea Q-2 2018
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XVI Sri Lanka Q-4 2018
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Vol. V 2019
XVII Russia Q-1 2019
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XIV South Korea Q-3 2019
XV Puerto Rico Q-4 2019
Issue Title Quarterly
Vol. VI 2020
XVI Trinidad & Tobago Q-1 2020
XVII Egypt Q-2 2020
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XIX South Africa Q-4 2020
XX Israel Bonus
Vol. VII 2021
XXI Haiti Q-1 2021
XXII Peru Q-2 2021
XXIII Costa Rica Q-3 2021
XXIV China Q-4 2021
XXV Japan Bonus
Vol VIII 2022
XXVI Chile Q-1 2022
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The e-Advocate Juvenile Justice Report
______
Vol. I – Juvenile Delinquency in The US
Vol. II. – The Prison Industrial Complex
Vol. III – Restorative/ Transformative Justice
Vol. IV – The Sixth Amendment Right to The Effective Assistance of Counsel
Vol. V – The Theological Foundations of Juvenile Justice
Vol. VI – Collaborating to Eradicate Juvenile Delinquency
Page 112 of 119

The e-Advocate Newsletter
Genesis of The Problem
Family Structure
Societal Influences
Evidence-Based Programming
Strengthening Assets v. Eliminating Deficits
2012 - Juvenile Delinquency in The US
Introduction/Ideology/Key Values
Philosophy/Application & Practice
Expungement & Pardons
Pardons & Clemency
Examples/Best Practices
2013 - Restorative Justice in The US
2014 - The Prison Industrial Complex
25% of the World's Inmates Are In the US
The Economics of Prison Enterprise
The Federal Bureau of Prisons
The After-Effects of Incarceration/Individual/Societal
The Fourth Amendment Project
The Sixth Amendment Project
The Eighth Amendment Project
The Adolescent Law Group
2015 - US Constitutional Issues In The New Millennium
Page 113 of 119

2018 - The Theological Law Firm Academy
The Theological Foundations of US Law & Government
The Economic Consequences of Legal Decision-Making
The Juvenile Justice Legislative Reform Initiative
The EB-5 International Investors Initiative
2017 - Organizational Development
The Board of Directors
The Inner Circle
Staff & Management
Succession Planning
Bonus #1 The Budget
Bonus #2 Data-Driven Resource Allocation
2018 - Sustainability
The Data-Driven Resource Allocation Process
The Quality Assurance Initiative
The Advocacy Foundation Endowments Initiative
The Community Engagement Strategy
2019 - Collaboration
Critical Thinking for Transformative Justice
International Labor Relations
Immigration
God's Will & The 21st Century Democratic Process
The Community Engagement Strategy
The 21st Century Charter Schools Initiative
2020 - Community Engagement
Page 114 of 119

Extras
The Nonprofit Advisors Group Newsletters
The 501(c)(3) Acquisition Process
The Board of Directors
The Gladiator Mentality
Strategic Planning
Fundraising
501(c)(3) Reinstatements
The Collaborative US/ International Newsletters
How You Think Is Everything
The Reciprocal Nature of Business Relationships
Accelerate Your Professional Development
The Competitive Nature of Grant Writing
Assessing The Risks
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Page 116 of 119

About The Author
John C (Jack) Johnson III
Founder & CEO
Jack was educated at Temple University, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Rutgers
Law School, in Camden, New Jersey. In 1999, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia to pursue
greater opportunities to provide Advocacy and Preventive Programmatic services for atrisk/
at-promise young persons, their families, and Justice Professionals embedded in the
Juvenile Justice process in order to help facilitate its transcendence into the 21 st Century.
There, along with a small group of community and faith-based professionals, “The Advocacy Foundation, Inc." was conceived
and developed over roughly a thirteen year period, originally chartered as a Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Educational
Support Services organization consisting of Mentoring, Tutoring, Counseling, Character Development, Community Change
Management, Practitioner Re-Education & Training, and a host of related components.
The Foundation’s Overarching Mission is “To help Individuals, Organizations, & Communities Achieve Their Full Potential”, by
implementing a wide array of evidence-based proactive multi-disciplinary "Restorative & Transformative Justice" programs &
projects currently throughout the northeast, southeast, and western international-waters regions, providing prevention and support
services to at-risk/ at-promise youth, to young adults, to their families, and to Social Service, Justice and Mental
Health professionals” everywhere. The Foundation has since relocated its headquarters to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and been
expanded to include a three-tier mission.
In addition to his work with the Foundation, Jack also served as an Adjunct Professor of Law & Business at National-Louis
University of Atlanta (where he taught Political Science, Business & Legal Ethics, Labor & Employment Relations, and Critical
Thinking courses to undergraduate and graduate level students). Jack has also served as Board President for a host of wellestablished
and up & coming nonprofit organizations throughout the region, including “Visions Unlimited Community
Development Systems, Inc.”, a multi-million dollar, award-winning, Violence Prevention and Gang Intervention Social Service
organization in Atlanta, as well as Vice-Chair of the Georgia/ Metropolitan Atlanta Violence Prevention Partnership, a state-wide
300 organizational member, violence prevention group led by the Morehouse School of Medicine, Emory University and The
Original, Atlanta-Based, Martin Luther King Center.
Attorney Johnson’s prior accomplishments include a wide-array of Professional Legal practice areas, including Private Firm,
Corporate and Government postings, just about all of which yielded significant professional awards & accolades, the history and
chronology of which are available for review online. Throughout his career, Jack has served a wide variety of for-profit
corporations, law firms, and nonprofit organizations as Board Chairman, Secretary, Associate, and General Counsel since 1990.
www.TheAdvocacyFoundation.org
Clayton County Youth Services Partnership, Inc. – Chair; Georgia Violence Prevention Partnership, Inc – Vice Chair; Fayette
County NAACP - Legal Redress Committee Chairman; Clayton County Fatherhood Initiative Partnership – Principal
Investigator; Morehouse School of Medicine School of Community Health Feasibility Study - Steering Committee; Atlanta
Violence Prevention Capacity Building Project – Project Partner; Clayton County Minister’s Conference, President 2006-2007;
Liberty In Life Ministries, Inc. – Board Secretary; Young Adults Talk, Inc. – Board of Directors; ROYAL, Inc - Board of
Directors; Temple University Alumni Association; Rutgers Law School Alumni Association; Sertoma International; Our
Common Welfare Board of Directors – President)2003-2005; River’s Edge Elementary School PTA (Co-President); Summerhill
Community Ministries; Outstanding Young Men of America; Employee of the Year; Academic All-American - Basketball;
Church Trustee.
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www.TheAdvocacyFoundation.org
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