Jim F.
On Mon, 26 Nov 2001 09:44:20 -0500 "Nathan Newman" <nathan at newman.org>
writes:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Charles Brown" <CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us>
>
> >It would be a tremendous disservice to the left forces of the world
> for
> National Lawyers Guild
> >and other left lawyers to fail to make all of the important legal
> arguments
> that the U.S.
> >action violates both domestic U.S. law and international law.
> >The UN Charter prohibits waging war except in self-defense. Again
> the
> nation
> >of Afghanistan did not attack the U.S. The harboring of criminals
> is
> properly dealt
> >with through extradition, not waging war on the nation in which
> the
> criminals reside.
> >Left lawyer should be raising these arguments, and should not
> surrender
> this issue
> >as Nathan gives up. The NLG would not be proud of you.
>
> Without question, many/most in the NLG buy this "illegal war"
> approach to
> the law, but I side with an earlier generation of left lawyers, the
> legal
> realists, in believing the law is not what academics might wish, but
> what
> the law is in practice. And the United Nations has sanctioned a
> wide array
> of wars with quite flexible definitions of "self defense."
>
> I don't believe in a platonic "Law" that exists abstractly but
> nowhere in
> practice.
>
> There are many things that are legal, which I oppose. And many
> which are
> illegal which I support. The Gulf War was sanctioned by every
> measure of
> international law, yet I think it was wrong.
>
> Whether a war is legal or illegal is a matter of relative
> indifference to me
> in a world of international inequity and violence, where those
> deciding the
> "legality" of violence are largely those with the biggest guns.
>
> The only issue is whether a particular conflict is fought for moral
> and just
> goals, with a reasonable likelihood of success in those goals. Most
> wars
> fail that test. The Kosovo intervention was the only largescale
> conflict by
> the US that has met that standard for me in my lifetime.
>
> The obsession of left lawyers with "legality" is in my mind a
> degeneration
> of a once proud tradition that questioned the war positivism of
> legal power
> in the world, which sought to replace the question of what is legal
> with
> what is just. The latter question of justice is the only one that
> matters.
> The rule of law may often serve justice, but it is a tool of the
> latter,
> never its master.
>
> -- Nathan Newman
>
>
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