Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

The central contribution of the Western legal tradition to human civilization lies in its deliberate and sustained elevation of rational argument and discourse, of the intellectual resolution of problems and interpretation of rules, as the alternative to arbitrary power and monocratic regulation.

Law aims at coherence of form and of substance, of procedures and principles. Long before it comes anywhere near achieving that aim, it is disturbed by new problems, new demands, and new ways of seeing things that threaten old structures and principles while offering competing and conflicting suggestions for the new. Law puts stress on justice and continuity as the cardinal social virtues. But with everybody now demanding the law's favor, it is certainly no longer in danger of ossification. Like the rest of us, law and lawyers have to live by their wits, seeking to reconcile, accommodate, and tone down when necessary competing and conflicting demands. To do this in a courtroom and not in the barricades or in a back alley may not satisfy everyone instantly, or even in the long run. However, it makes for the difference between a society that is livable in and one that is not. The societies governed by law have been signally more successful in extending the range of persons and interests entitled to genuine consideration, to speak with and in their own voice, than the societies that elevate neither law nor constitutions, but the mass rally and the "general will".

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