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35 A.B.A. J. 641 (1949)
World Law or World Anarchy: The Case for a World Federal Government

handle is hein.journals/abaj35 and id is 643 raw text is: World Law or World Anarchy: The Case for a World Federal Government by W. T. Holliday - of the Ohio Bar' E Mr. Holliday's thesis is that the world is in the throes of a revolution, and that from that revolution some form of world government will emerge. He believes that it is not a question of whether we shall have world government, but whether that world government shall be dominated by Russia or the United States, or it shall be a reasonable limited federal world government. Prepared from a speech delivered to the State Bar luncheon honoriRg the district and county attorneys of Texas, this article is a stimulating statement of the case of the United World Federalists, of which Mr. Holliday is Vice President. 0 Even lawyers may sometimes for- get that law and courts are the bed- rock of our domestic society. The late John Chipman Gray, of Har- vard, used to admonish his students every year, at an early point in his course on evidence, that they should bear in mind that the fundamental purpose of the courts is to keep the peace. Improvement of law and jus- tice is a corollary purpose, but the fundamental function of courts is to keep the peace. From their earliest, most primitive clays, men found that they could not live in a state of anarchy. When they first came out of the caves or down from the trees to live with other men, they found they could have no security, no freedom, no peace, ex- cept under a rule of law, some kind of government. Outside the tribe or clan was anarchy, and this resulted in continual intertribal wars until, by force or agreement, tribes com- bined. This process of expansion of the group, and removal of inter- group anarchy, continued over the ages until nations removed the no- man's-land of anarchy between bar- onies and principalities and provin- cial states, and nations became the units of law and order. But this expansion of the area of law and order stopped at national borders. Today we still have the no- man's-land between nations, in which there is nothing but anarchy so crude that people would not en- dure it for one moment within the borders of their nations. Political Unity Will Follow World's Physical Unity We are in the midst of a world revo- lution which makes the continuance of such international anarchy incon- sistent, to put it mildly, with civili- zation's survival. The Industrial Rev- olution brought the world closer to- gether through interdependence for raw materials and manufactured products. The rapid technological and scientific developments of more recent years have reduced the world to a single unit physically and eco- nomically, although not socially, cul- turally or politically. Social and ctal- tural differences can continue -with- out essential danger to the world, but a world which has physically be- come one cannot have peace and security except through a political unity which removes the no-man's- land of anarchy between nations. The physical unity of the world will inevitably produce some sort of po- litical unity. It is frequently said, however, that men are so pugnacious that they like war, and so there is no hope of end- ing war until human nature changes. History shows that this is just not true. Men continually fight when they are in a state of anarchy; they cannot help it. But when the area of anarchy is removed and law and or- der take its place, the resort to force and violence becomes so rare that it is news, and in modern society gets headlines in the newspapers. It has been a peculiar quality of man that when law requires him to settle his disputes in courts of law, he accepts as a matter of course the decisions of the courts, even though they be against him. Not so many centuries ago in England there was a rather formalized trial by combat. If a dispute arose the contestants put August, 1949 • Vol. 35 641

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