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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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