International Law
International Law – The Lawyers Initiative for International Peace
Whereas, attorneys are uniquely situated throughout the world, in their communities and in their local and national governments, to influence societies in a positive way, this initiative is set to foster and implement ideas for the world legal community to have a positive effect on the reduction of armed conflict throughout the world. The process by which we hope to achieve such a lofty goal is three fold:
- Encourage the process of fostering and sharing new ideas by writing, publishing, and otherwise disseminating across borders and throughout the world legal community ways in which we as a community can use the domestic, international, civil, and criminal legal processes to dissuade armed conflict and encourage diplomacy.
- Then to take the best of these ideas and employ them to action whenever and wherever action is needed to dissuade armed conflict and encourage diplomacy.
- And to act as one voice that there are better, more highly evolved, and civilized ways to settle conflicts and disputes than that of physical violence and armed conflict.
May we never see another war! For in my opinion there never was a good war, or a bad peace. What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility? What an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what Rivers rendered navigable, joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads and other public works, edifices and improvements rendering a complete paradise, might not have been attained by spending those millions in doing good, which in war were spent in doing mischief, and in bringing misery into thousands of families, and destroying the lives of so many thousands of working people who might’ve performed useful labor!
– Benjamin Franklin, Letter to Josiah Quincy, September 11, 1773
Please contact us if you have interest in being part of this initiative.