On the Prevention of Violence

On the Prevention of Violence Robert A. Friedlander Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/tcl Part of the Human Rights Law Commons, International Humanitarian Law Commons, and the International Law Commons Recommended Citation - Article 3 On The Prevention of Violencet ROBERT A. FRIEDLANDER* [T]hey that take the sword shall perish with the sword................... Matthew 26:52. Not without reason has the twentieth century been called an "Age of Conflict"' and "The Century of Total War."' In a controversial and widely debated essay written at the end of the Second World War, dissident Marxist philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty claims that "violence is our lot. . . . Violence is the common origin of all regimes. Life, discussion, and political choice occur only against a background of violence.", Violence is the antithesis of the rule of law. The most recent manifestation of global conflict-domestic and international terrorism-is a war against law and law-ordered society.' Throughout modem history, advocates of revolutionary change have argued that the end justifies the means and that violent means are permissible and indeed desirable in order to attain revolutionary ends.' This is not only a legitimization of terror,6 it is also a denial of fundamental human rights.7 Few would gainsay the most significant global phenomeon of the t Report presented to the Pax Romana Conference, Manila, the Phillipines, December 1979. * Professor of Law, Ohio Northern University; Ph.D. (History), Northwestern University, 1963; J.D., DePaul University, 1973. F. CHAMBERS, THIS AGE OF CONFLICT: THE WESTERN WORLD, 1914 TO THE PRESENT (3d ed. 1962). 2 R. ARON, THE CENTURY OF TOTAL WAR (1954). ' M. MERLEAU-PONTY, HUMANISM AND TERROR: AN ESSAY ON THE COMMUNIST PROBLEM 109 (J. O'Neill trans. 1971). 1 For those committed to the ways of terror-violence, one observer has commented that "[1]aw is a delusion, and nothing can be hoped for from any action taken within the rules of the social contract." J. REVEL, THE TOTALrrARIAN TEMPTATION 104 (D. Hapgood trans. 1978). 1 See, e.g., F. FANON, THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH (C. Farrington trans. 1963); G. SOREL, REFLECTIONS ON VIOLENCE (T.E. Hulme trans. 1941). 6 A. CAMUS, NEITHER VICTIMS NOR EXECUTIONERS (D. Macdonald trans. 1972) [hereinafter cited as VICTIMS]. I South African novelist Alan Paton, a bitter and courageous foe of apartheid, declared: "I regard the rule of law [as] the most fundamental of human rights." The Chicago Tribune, Oct. 26, 1977, § 1, at 2, col. 2. third quarter of this century, aside from the development of atomic energy, to be the disintegration and destruction of former colonial empires and the emergence of 100 independent states.' Yet, as philosopher Sidney Hook pointed out almost 50 years ago, violence inevitably becomes the handmaiden of mass movements of social and political reform., National liberation struggles have often adopted techniques of terror-violence as the most expeditious method for achieving self-determination, and even the United Nations has condoned rather than condemned such measures."0 Consequently, the authoritative voice of Pope Paul VI, denouncing all forms of terrorism through his annual Christmas message of December 1977," has gone unheeded by those seeking to revolutionize the social and political order. Twentieth-century violence between and among nation-states not only engendered the modem alliance system but also played a substantial role in the coming of two world wars.' Totalitarian violence directed at captive populations and subject peoples was instrumental in the new post-Second World War international legal formulation making the individual a proper subject for public international law.' 3 The legacy of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Judgments-and of the Holocaust era-led to the establishment of the International Protection of Human Rights, beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December 1948." Contemporary governmental violence has been a major factor in the further development of theoretical human rights guarantees, 5 but the actual historical record unfortunately demonstrates a contrary trend.'" On December 6, 1978, in his White House speech commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, American President Carter pointedly observed: "Of all human rights, the most basic is to be free of arbitrary violence-whether that violence comes from governments, from terrorists, from criminals, or from self-appointed messiahs operating under the cover of politics or religion."' 7 The statement is as significant for its bare limitations as it is for its fundamental assumptions. Non-arbitrary, purposeful, selective violence, if it be in the national interest or for a deserving cause (the latter most likely related to a majoritarian concept), is impliedly permissible. Who decides the justice of a particular cause? Can there. ever be a truly just w (...truncated)