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University Daily Kansan
Friday, March 6, 1964
Harris Discusses Unified World Law
By Rogers Worthington
Both legal thinkers and political philosophers agree that an international federal authority would be the answer to the legal problems of world order.
That was the conclusion of Errol E. Harris, professor of philosophy, last night in a lecture on "The Legal Principles of International Order."
The theorists who advocate "legal monism"-an international law authority which would have the right and power to make, interpret, administer and enforce the law—base their theories on the assumption that a world community already exists, or has the potential to exist, Prof. Harris said.
PROF. HARRIS QUESTIONED whether such a community exists "in actuality or in potentiality, and if it
does, what would conditions be for its organization in practice."
Such a system of laws would regulate the relations between the activities of individual members of a world-wide community, rather than a plurality of communities of sovereign states, Prof. Harris said.
The system would be objective to everybody and would approximate the idea of natural law, "derived from the rational nature and purposes of the human race," he said.
But Prof. Harris said that the theory of "legal monism" does not "dispose finally of philosophical problems concerning the possibility of an ultimate objective standard of law and morals."
IT DOES, however, "provide a workable notion of a law, universal and valid for all mankind," he added.
Prof. Harris examined the ideas of several legal thinkers who advocate "legal monism."
Such theories, he said, "tend to give a definition of law which divorces it from political factors and makes it anterior to them."
A legal order is defined differently by each theorist of legal monism, Prof. Harris said, but they all seem to agree that "it is not dependent upon will or interest and so is prior to the form of the state or the assumption of power by a sovereign."
"IN THIS TYPE of theory," he added, "sovereignty is not regarded as a source of law and has no real legal status at all."
"Humanity, for this view of law," he continued, "is always taken in some sense, to constitute a single
A Rock Is Worth 1,000 Words
By Linda Ellis
To many children all over Kansas and the United States KU means Mrs. Grace Muilenberg.
Mrs. Muilenberg works with the Kansas Geological Survey and among her varied duties she has the responsibility for answering letters from children who want information concerning the soil, climate, topography and minerals of Kansas.
Letters arrive each day from California, Massachusetts, New York City and New Jersey from children requesting samples of chalk, Kansas rocks, or soil samples. Each letter gets a prompt, personal reply from Mrs. Mullenberg or one of her secretaries. Requests are filled when it is possible and each letter and the response is filed according to the year and the alphabet.
MRS. MUILENBERG says the children receive her address from their teachers, various chambers of commerce, state offices of the Departments of the Interior and other groups.
groups. Letters sent to the governor's office in Topeka are sent to Mrs. Mullenberg as are those sent to the Chamber of Commerce in Kansas City, and the Department of the
Interior in Topeka. They often are routed through several other agencies before they finally arrive in Mrs. Muilenberg's office.
Children as young as eight years old write to the office asking for small rocks and soil samples. Some of them are barely able to write and their requests are often simple and sincere. All of those who write are interested in learning something about Kansas.
ONE SMALL girl from the Bronx in New York wrote a barely legible note requesting the "most popular rock in Kansas." She drew an irregular circle on a piece of brown paper to indicate the exact size of the rock she wanted.
Another small girl started writing to the Geological Survey office about three years ago. She orginally wrote asking for a piece of rock and when she received an answer she wrote back again. She became familiar to the secretaries in the office and at one time even sent her picture in a letter.
The child kept writing to the office because she said "you are the only governor who has ever answered my letters." She first wrote to the governor of Kansas and her letter was forwarded to the office in
Lawrence. Since the time she received her first reply she has thought she was corresponding with the governor and addressed her letters: "Dear Governor, Mrs. Muiilenberg."
IN ADDITION to the letters she receives from school children Mrs. Muilenberg gets requests from teachers, housewives and other educators for information about the state. Every teacher who requests it receives a free box of 20 rock specimens from Kansas plus literature that goes with it.
The specimens included in the boxes are collected by geology instructors and students in the geology department who go out in the field for various projects. Each one brings back samples to be enclosed in the free boxes. The boxes are prepared and leaflets are printed with information about each rock. All of the information enclosed in the boxes is paid for by the State of Kansas and is given free to anyone who wants it.
MRS. MUILENBERG writes and edits most of the literature that is sent out. She does her own research and puts the booklets together.
Answering the letters is a small but vital part of the work done by the Kansas Geological Survey.
President Lives In Goldfish Bowl, Watched By All Eyes of the World
By Alvin Spivak
WASHINGTON —(UPI)— With the eyes of the world focused on him, it is next to impossible for a President to have much privacy.
Except in the well-guarded confines of the White House or behind other doors barred to outsiders, a President is someone for the public to see.
In campaign years, particularly,
e President likes to be seen.
BUT COMPLICATIONS arise—aside from the obvious ones of security—when a President insists upon privacy in the midst of a crowd.
The latest case in point is President Johnson's desire to avoid publicity, or perhaps more particularly the presence of the press, when he attends church or non-official social functions.
Despite extreme measures to divert, delude and discourage newsmen, word can hardly help getting out when Johnson goes to a downtown church packed with 1,500 worshippers or when he attends a party with hundreds of Texans in a centrally located Washington hotel.
That was what happened last Sunday, and is an example of what has been happening over recent weeks. The President's view has been that his religious worship is a private matter, and that his few chances for social relaxation should not be burdened by news coverage.
IN CONFLICT WITH this understandable viewpoint is the fact that Johnson, to paraphrase his own words, is "the only President we got." And when he is exposed to public view, whether in a church full of people or a hotel banquet hall, reporters and cameramen want to be on hand to
record his activities and maintain protective coverage should anything unexpected occur.
To throw newsmen off the track in several trips to private parties and receptions, Johnson has foregone the police motorcycle escort otherwise insisted upon by the Secret Service. The usual uniformed police guards outside the churches he attends were dispensed with when he went to services last Sunday and secret servicemen acted as if he had no plans to leave the White House.
The effect in a case like this—even though the size of crowds is reduced by a lack of advance notice—is to make the Secret Service's job of protecting Johnson more difficult when a passing throng does catch on to where he is.
AS FOR THE Texas State Society party that Johnson visited after church on Sunday, word had gone out from some of its members a day in advance that Johnson might be coming—even though White House secrecy was such that one Secret Service agent asserted "my lips are zippered."
In his first couple of months as President, Johnson went out of his way to make known as many of his activities as possible, official and unofficial. He wanted to assure the American public—shocked by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy—that a new Chief Executive had firm hold of the governmental reins and that even the gravest tragedy could not interrupt the flow of government.
There's only a reduced force of security personnel to cope with the onlookers.
Kennedy, too, when he was new
in office, permitted many details of his activities to be made known—including his church attendance, subject to a request to newsmen not to advertise the locale in advance.
But Kennedy later got irked about having his personal activities tracked. And Johnson is showing the same tendency. Which proves, if nothing else, the obvious point that even presidents are human.
With the exception of one, all the legal thinkers Prof. Harris discussed considered the universal legal system to be explicitly the law of the universal community. He added that the world community is, "as yet, relatively unorganized."
community to which the universal system of law corresponds."
"The organization of the world community," he said, "is assumed to be progressing and is taken to be both desirable and necessary for the adequate establishment of the rule of law in international relations throughout the world."
"It is anticipated," he continued, "that this process will result in the establishment of institutions with world-wide jurisdiction, the establishment, in short, of a world state."
This conclusion is common to all theories of legal monism, Prof. Harris said, "and the rehabilitation of the idea of sovereignty transferred to the world community, is obviously implied in it."
"The implication is uncongenial to several of the exponents of the theory, and they are to avoid it, but none with consistency or success," he concluded.
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