Aggression against Authority: The Crime of Oppression, Politicide and Other Crimes against Human Rights
![handle is hein.journals/cwrint18 and id is 289 raw text is: Aggression Against Authority: The Crime of Oppression,
Politicide And Other Crimes Against Human Rights
by Jordan J. Paust*
The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War
against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the De-
fenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man
... So wrote the American revolutionary Thomas Paine in Febru-
ary of 1776. The war against human rights' of which he wrote had al-
ready led to the 1775 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking
Up Arms, which had denounced Parliament's cruel and impolitic pur-
pose of enslaving the [the colonials] . . . by violence . . ., the British
government's intemperate rage for unlimited domination, acts of
cruel aggression, and numerous oppressive measures that had re-
duced our political ancestors to the alternative of chusing an uncondi-
tional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by
force.3 As the world knows, our ancestors chose armed revolution as
the self-help sanction response to aggression against the authority of the
people,4 and our revolution served as a precursor for numerous others in
the Americas, Europe, and elsewhere, even into the twentieth century.5
Although the war against human rights and the crime of political
oppression led to no criminal sanctions against the King of England and
his retainers, an international trial would not have been completely un-
precedented. For the oppression of persons under his charge and actions
against the laws of God and man, the Burgundian Peter von
* Professor of Law, University of Houston, Law Center. J.D. (1968), U.C.L.A.; LL.M. (1972),
University of Virginia; J.S.D. Candidate., Yale University.
I T. PAINE, COMMON SENSE Introduction (Feb. 14, 1776) reprinted in THE ESSENTIAL
THOMAS PAINE 23-24 (S. Hook ed. 1969).
2 That the Founders considered this and similar phrases to be the equivalent of the phrase
human rights, see J. PAUST, ON HUMAN RIGHTS: THE USE OF HUMAN RIGHT PRECEPTS IN
U.S. HISTORY AND THE RIGHT TO AN EFFECTIVE REMEDY IN DOMESTIC COURTS (forthcoming);
Paust, Human Dignity as a Constitutional Right: A Jurisprudentially Based Inquiry Into Criteria and
Content, 27 How. L.J. 145, 221, 221 n.281 (1984) [hereinafter cited as Paust, Human Dignity].
3 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (1775) reprinted in SOURCES OF
OUR LIBERTIES 295, 297-99 (R. Perry ed. 1978).
4 See generally Paust, The Human Right to Participate in Armed Revolution and Related Forms
of Social Voilence: Testing the Limits of Permissibility, 32 EMORY L.J. 545 (1983) [hereinafter cited
as Paust, The Human Right to Participate].
5 Id. at 547 n.6.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/cwrint18&div=23&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Aggression against Authority: The Crime of Oppression, Politicide and Other Crimes against Human Rights
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