Discussion

Abstract

Taking a lead from the comments of Nigel Rodley and Ellen FreyWouters, I disagree that we are concerned with radical groups but not with revolutionary groups. There are at least two kinds of doctrinal sources upon which (Western) international lawyers can draw to help define their own radical perceptions. These are, in general, risk-laden terms. First, the European social democratic background, the historic trends of which have been spelled out by Ellen Frey-Wouters and which has been related elsewhere to other formulations of Marxist thought Second, a background, best characterized as eclectic, based upon events in the United States, which especially concern us here. There is an absence of rigid doctrinal formulations. A whole range of radical thought is covered, ranging from the Weathermen (luddite anarchism?) to Imamu Baraka's black cultural nationalism which substantively differs from them. All of these groups are making fundamental radical or revolutionary claims upon the status quo, raising the question of how international lawyers should relate to them, whether or not we have our own coherent radical position. The way to reach such a position may well come from a willingness to represent the claims of such groups. For example, although the Black Panthers have no coherent position on international law, nonetheless they challenge the international status quo by setting up an office in Algiers and by claiming in speech and action a right of free passage across national boundaries, unhindered by national governments, for transnational purposes. A radical international lawyer would have a duty to formulate such claims in the context of the existing international system. As Nigel Rodley said, an international radical legal position cannot be separated from value questions and ideology. The Black experience dictates the value orientation of Black lawyers frequently against the status quo, as may be seen in the writings of DuBois and Malcolm X, in terms of the way they think and the claims they will represent. Further, the Black Panthers' claim raises the issue of whether a major tenet of a radical position is a fundamental questioning of the premise of universal doctrine, that it applies to all entities equally, no matter what their value and resource position. This would lead to such a concept as "selective national sovereignty" —that certain states in a stated value position should have their sovereignty protected and others should not—and to the legal claims that would flow therefrom. Prof. FREY-WOOTERS observed that Nigel Rodle/s statement that the key word in any definition of "radical" is anti-imperialist may be too narrow a view of radicalism. Socialist radicals accept the existence of three basic and interacting contradictions that affect the international legal system. These perceptions seem to be shared by a great number of peaceful transformation oriented non-socialist radicals. As Charles Chaumont pointed out in his Hague lectures in 1970, the first contradiction is between the right of national revolution and the need for a stable international legal