The Vital Need

Eighty thousand Soviet jackboots slapped against Red Square as Moscow celebrated May Day last week. Thousands of miles away, the U.S. was commemorating a different kind of day--Law Day--in 100,000 peaceful ceremonies. On Chicago's lakefront, 959 aliens held their right arms high to pledge allegiance to a system of justice under the law, and were sworn in as new citizens. From Portland. Ore., to Hillsboro, Texas, high school students acted as jurors in mock trials. Atlanta ministers delivered sermons. Seattle TV stations presented programs, San Diego lawyers met with foreign-exchange students--all to explain the meaning of law and the vital need for its rule in the world.

Key quotes from lawyers and laymen:

P: John C. Satterfield, incoming president of the American Bar Association, speaking to Emory University law students in Atlanta: "We of the free world are waging a cold war which is just as deadly and just as dangerous as the hot war which has thus far been averted. We must win this war. No greater program of leadership could be presented to the world today than liberty under the law as our answer to the Communist propaganda war."

P: Whitney North Seymour, president of the American Bar Association, speaking at Manhattan's Interchurch Center: "We should strive to improve the institutions which will apply the principles of international law. This means strengthening the U.N., preserving and insuring the independence of the Secretary-General, creating a permanent peace force under the U.N. in place of the present improvised system, and strengthening the World Court."

P: Charles S. Rhyne, past president of the American Bar Association, speaking at the University of Notre Dame Law School: "The urgent desire to prevent war offers a unique opportunity to develop the legal machinery that is essential for an enduring peace. There is an imperative need to find a consensus on the basis of which as many disputes as possible can be adjudicated in the World Court or other international regional courts."

P: Tom C. Clark, Supreme Court Justice, speaking to the San Antonio Bar Association: "Our job is to bring home to people the fact that if we, the people of the world, are to live, we, the same people, must see to it that our respective governments operate under the rule of law--not the rule of men."

P: Byron R. White, Deputy U.S. Attorney General, speaking at the University of Chicago Law School: "If establishment of the rule of law is the goal of lawyers, then lawyers have no license to sit idly by when the orders of courts or the commands of statutes are disregarded by large groups of people, whether it be in the North, the East, the South or the West. This is not the rule of law, and lawyers should speak in a loud and clear voice. The time is ripe for a great breakthrough in the field of international public order. It may be, as some say, that it is impossible to find common interests among the nations upon which to build a public order. But our mutual interest in survival is a good starting point."

P: Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General, speaking at the University of Georgia Law School: "If one man's rights are denied, the rights of all are endangered. In our country the courts have a most important role in safeguarding these rights. The decisions of the courts, much as we might disagree with them, must be followed and respected. Every day must be Law Day, or else our society will collapse. I happen to believe that the 1954 decision (by the U.S. Supreme Court ordering an end to school segregation) was right. But my belief does not matter--it is the law. Some of you may believe the decision was wrong. That does not matter. It is the law. And we both respect the law."

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