UNITED NATIONS
Sir,- Your correspondent J.G.G. writes: "Some international body of jurymen should be set up to which all disputes between nations should be submitted in the first instance: . ." Such a body, while it might the core of an effective world security system, could not by itself produce the order or justice that we find within British nations. British juries are able to adntinister justice principally because they function as part of a government which can create laws and has the means and the recognised right to enforce them. We have an International Court of Justice, but neither this body nor the
United Nations has the right or power to compel nations to take their disputes to court. It is doubtful if even British juries could be effective if those who violated or threatened to violate the .law could not be compelled to go to court. A British court has a body of recognised law upon which to base its decisions, but there is no corresponding body of world law upon which a world court could base its decisions and neither is there a world legislature empowered to create such laws. J.G.G. suggests that the judgments of an international jury should automatically carry sanctions, This raises the questions of who is to apply the sanctions and how they are to be applied. The United Nations as presently constituted can deal only with nations in their corporate capacity, and therefore sanctions applied by it must be brought to bear upon an entire natioh. This is unjust to the point of being indecent and unworkable to the point of being ridiculous. In this atomic age punitive wars against nations even in so noble a cause as world justice must be ruled out. Individual responsibility to British law makes the British jury system practicable. Individual responsibility to world law is an equally essential prerequisite of a practical world jury system. The British jury system works because we have British Governments. A world jury system might be made to work if we first make the United Nations a world government. With a UN Charter Review Conference on the agenda of the next General Assembly we have an opportunity of doing just
this,
G. C.
TITMAN
(Auckland).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 11
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372UNITED NATIONS New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 11
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