E A C H MAN'S STAKE IN 
THE UNITED N A T I O N S 
— A CATHOLIC VIEW 

BY JOHN EPPSTEIN 



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. I — ~ 
D E F E N D 
T H E S E 
H U M A N 
R I G H T S ! 

EACH MAN'S STAKE IN 
THE UNITED NATIONS 
— A CATHOLIC VIEW 

By JOHN EPPSTEIN 
author of 

The Catholic Tradition of the Law of Nations 

AMERICA PRESS 
70 EAST 45th STREET NEW YORK 17, N. Y. 



Nihil Obstat: 
Ht. Rev. Msgr. John M. A. Fearns 

Censor Librorum 
Imprimatur : 

A Francis Cardinal Spellman, D.D. 
Archbishop of Nevi York 

©SÉjldfed' 





CONTENTS « 

I G R O W T H O F T H E M O V E M E N T T O D E F E N D 
H U M A N R I G H T S 

Purpose of the War: Good Intentions Confused 

The New Intolerance on "the Left" 

Other Dangers to Liberty on "the Right" and 

Elsewhere 

Human Rights in the Charter 

The Catholic Position 

II. H U M A N R I G H T S W H I C H ARE O F T E N OVER-

The Family 

Religious Education 

Corporate Property 

Civil Rights: Precision Needed 

The Right of Migration 

Preserving Acquired Rights 

L O O K E D 16 

III. J U R I D I C A L P R O T E C T I O N NECESSARY 38 

National Laws 

International Control 

* 

IV. C O N C L U S I O N : 

Appendix—A D E C L A R A T I O N OF R I G H T S 

S T U D Y CLUB O U T L I N E 

44 

47 

54 



Defend These Human Rights! 
I. 

GROWTH OF THE MOVEMENT TO DEFEND 
HUMAN RIGHTS 

The rise of the totalitarian State, first in Russia, 
then in Italy and Germany, with its increasingly grave 
violations, both in theory and practice, of the inalien-
able rights of the human person, caused Catholic moral-
ists and sociologists in many countries throughout the 
nineteen-thirties to insist that la defense de la personne 
humaine, or the protection of personal rights, had 
become the most urgent of social causes.1 This was some-
what different from the familiar enumeration of "the 
Rights of Man and the Citizen" which finds its place 
in several State constitutions, and which it had been 
proposed in some academic circles of international 
lawyers to make the subject of an international declara-
tion, beginning with the European Institute of Inter-
national Law, meeting in Rome in 1921. By "the human 
person" the Christian opponents of State absolutism 
meant particularly man as a spiritual being. The most 
important thing about man, to the Christian, is not his 
citizenship but his soul. It is precisely because of the 
spiritual nature of man and his immortal destiny, which 
quite transcends the State, that the pretensions of the 
Nazi, Fascist and Communist systems to dispose of 

1 See, for instance, the striking report on this subject by the Rev. P. Delos, 
O. P., approved by the International Catholic Conference at The Hague, 1937, 
and published in English in Foundations of International Order (Catholic 
Social Guild, Oxford). 

5 



human beings like cattle, or even cogs in a machine, 
outraged and shocked the Christian conscience: indeed 
it shocked not only those who were fully conscious of 
what Christian civilization had done to uphold the 
dignity of men and women, but those also throughout 
the world, who, by unconscious habit, had inherited the 
values of that civilization. 

The war gave a fresh urgency to the defense of 
human rights and liberties. The call to free millions of 
human beings from the oppression which the unjust 
military occupation of their countries had brought upon 
them stirred the consciences and fired the wills of the 
vast majority of honest men, especially in the United 
States and the British countries which did not suffer 
enemy occupation. This was undoubtedly the dominant 
intention of many gallant young soldiers and sailors 
who did not live to see victory. 

Purpose of the War: Good Intentions Confused 

That right intention, which originally aimed 
primarily at the liberation of the Polish people (for 
intervention to aid Poland had been the moral justifi-
cation for the British and French declaration of war), 
became confused and eventually vitiated by the prin-
cipal Allied governments as the war proceeded. This 
was due to the demogogic exaltation in official propa-
ganda of undefined "Democracy," as the all-embracing 
purpose of the war. To the Catholic moralist, Democ-
racy is but a means (the best means we believe) to an 
end. It is a particular system of civil participation in 

6 



the choice of rulers and the conduct of public life, 
which we hold to be the best bridle upon tyranny and 
the best way of enabling the maximum number of 
citizens to contribute to the common good. The end is 
a rightly ordered society, in which true liberty to exer-
cise their innate rights and duties may be enjoyed by 
all men, and by the rich variety of associations which 
men form in accordance with the requirements of their 
nature. But who could be sure that this was implied in 
the "Democracy" so loudly preached by our politicians, 
the BBC or "Voice of America," by say, 1944? 

The New Intolerance on "the Left" 

The false simplification of war-time propaganda led, 
especially after 1941, to a lumping together of the war 
aims of all the Allies, the USSR and the Western Allies 
alike, under this title of "Democracy" which, it was 
supposed, would triumph so soon as "Fascism" had been 
laid low. But what did "Fascism" mean? Did it mean 
the governments and dominant parties of the enemy 
countries, Germany, Italy, Japan and their satellites? 
Or did it mean any opponents of this nebulous "Democ-
racy" anywhere and everywhere? 

The combination of muddled thinking and dishon-
esty, which more and more characterized the official 
vocabulary of the conquerors, enabled the Soviet Gov-
ernment to maintain the deceptively simple distinction 
between "Democrats" and "Fascists" when the fighting 
had ceased, as they set to work to consolidate their hold 
upon half the continent of Europe and to extend their 

7 



influence, as opportunity offered, further afield. "Demo-
crats" meant, there and everywhere, those who were 
subservient to Russian policy; "Fascists," all those 
who resented or resisted it. Meanwhile, those who from 
mental sloth or from political sympathy with the Soviet 
Government have continued to use this fatuous vocabu-
lary in the press, literature, radio and politics of the 
Western World have succeeded in blinding millions of 
honest but ill-informed people to the central fact of the 
present situation; which is, that this pseudo-Democracy 
is itself the chief enemy and oppressor of those human 
rights and values which we set out to vindicate in 
the war.2 • 

It is necessary to bear this paradox in mind when 
we come to consider the practical means by which 
human rights can, at this stage, be nationally and inter-
nationally safeguarded. And here a little clear thinking 
is required. It is more than doubtful whether any "com-
promise text" which the delegations of the Kremlin 
and its subordinate governments might accept in the 
United Nations Commission on Human Rights would 
be of any practical value, because it is those very 
Governments, which are the most flagrant oppressors 
of personal, civil and religious liberties today. 

There are those who believe that there is a peculiar 
merit in compromise, regardless of the moral or prac-

2 E.g. The wholesale uprooting or deportation of Polish and German 
populations; the terrorism exercised against all opponents of the Communist 
regimes installed ir> Yugoslavia and Poland; spurious elections in Rumania 
and Bulgaria; suppression of religious and youth organizations in Hun-
gary; partisan bloodshed fomented in Greece and the genera'l denial of civil 
and religious liberties in Eastern Europe. 



tical value of the content or object of the compromise. 
Members of the Secretariat of the United Nations (as 
of the League of Nations before them) are, not unnatu-
rally, professionally addicted to that view. But to start 
with the proposition, that any declaration or convention 
upon human rights must necessarily be something which 
Russian communism can accept, is to condemn such a 
measure to sterility. Nor, in this matter, is formal 
universality the first object to be sought: it is better 
that a declaration of this kind should only be signed, in 
the first instance, by Governments who mean to keep it 
and who are sustained in the signing and the keeping 
of it by an alert public opinion at home. Certainly the 
greater the number of States which adhere to it the 
better; but before speculating with worldly wisdom, on 
which Government is likely to sign or abide by an inter-
national Bill of Rights and which not, the first thing is 
to decide, in the light of right reason, Christian tradi-
tion and the experience of history, which of the natural 
rights of men most need defending and what is the best 
means of promoting that defense in national and inter-
national law. 

It is not, of course, true to say that the system of 
government in the Soviet Union, the Communist 
hegemony in the Baltic States, Poland, Eastern Ger-
many, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Rumania and Bulgaria 
and the control of large areas of China by Communist 
armies constitute the only threats to the essential rights 
of man and to the rights of God in human society. That 
danger is present wherever there is a powerful trend in 

9 



the direction of statolatria, as Pope Pius XI called it, 
the idolatry of the State. It exists in any country in 
which the growth of bureaucratic power; the national-
ization, one after another, of the means of production; 
the control of manpower; the substitution of official 
social services for private charity; the destruction by 
crushing taxation of the material conditions of personal 
and family independence, and the state monopoly of 
education contrive to create a mechanism of political 
omnipotence ready to the hand of whichever party 
secures the electoral majority. Unless the trend of 
history is miraculously reversed, the planned economy 
of today becomes the tyranny of tomorrow. And tyranny 
is none the less odious for being anonymous. 

Other Dangers to Liberty on "the Right" and Elsewhere 

It is not only against the "Servile State" of socialism 
that personal rights need to be defended. The silly 
creed of Fleet Street that "the Left is always right 
and the Right is always wrong," at least in any country 
but its own, will not deceive the serious student. If by 
"the Right" is meant the genuinely traditional forces of 
a nation, they have, as often as not, been the most con-
sistent enemies of National Socialism; and where, as in 
Austria, Switzerland, Belgium or the Netherlands they 
are consciously based upon Christian principles, they 
are no possible danger to the fundamental freedoms and 
rights of man. Certainly, however, politicians of the 
"Right" or of the "old Order" in various countries have 
frequently done violence to private liberties and, by a 

10 



compromising patronage, to the Church's independence. 
The Spanish Falange has many of the most objec-

tionable features of National Socialism combined with 
the single-party pretensions of Fascism, properly speak-
ing. There are also, in not a few countries, excesses of 
nationalism, always a potentially persecuting power. 
Racial hatred, whether it be the contempt of Europeans 
for colored peoples, or anti-Semitism, both flagrant 
violations of Christian charity, begets monstrous injus-
tices. There are, in the capitalist world, constant threats 
to just conditions of labor and an abuse of industrial and 
financial power which the Popes have condemned in 
the sternest terms. (E. g. Pius XI in Quadragesima 
Anno.) There is the danger, inseparable from the im-
pact of advanced civilization upon primitive peoples, 
of the exploitation or corruption of the native popula-
tion in colonial countries. 

There is also a great danger—too little noticed by 
apostles of self-determination—when a veneer of West-
ern political forms accompanies new-found national 
independence in Oriental countries; it is the danger of 
the economic subjection by the small class of political 
intelligentsia and business men of the mass of the 
illiterate poor. 

Human Rights in the Charter 

All these considerations add up to an overwhelming 
case against leaving human beings entirely to the tender 
mercies of the rulers of the Sovereign State and in favor 
of the contention that the rights of individuals should 

11 



be set forth in an international declaration and vindi-
cated by national governments and international organ-
izations. This was one of the seven basic principles 
of the "Pattern for Peace" adopted by duly authorized 
Catholic, Protestant and Jewish representatives in the 
United States on October 7, 1943. There is no need to 
recapitulate the strong and healthy pressure applied by 
unofficial organizations, both before and during the San 
Francisco Conference in support of that principle. The 
result of their endeavors is to be seen in the Preamble 
and in Article I of the Charter of the United Nations, as 
finally adopted. Here we find faith reaffirmed "in fun-
damental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the 
human person and in the equal rights of men and 
women"—welcome admission of the primacy of Natural 
Law. We find the objectives of the United Nations so 
defined as to include "promoting and encouraging 
respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms 
for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or 
religion." The Charter also lays down that the promo-
tion of these objectives is to come within the competence 
of the Economic and Social Council, which is to operate 
under the authority of the General Assembly (Art. 62), 
and stipulates (Art. 68) that a Commission shall be set 
up "for the promotion of human rights." 

That Commission was established on February 16, 
1946, with a nucleus of nine members, instructed to 
make recommendations upon the definitive composition 
of the Commission. Their recommendations having 
been received, the Economic and Social Council re-

12 



solved, on June 21, 1946, that this Commission should 
consist of the representatives of eighteen member States 
and that it might avail itself of the assistance of "non-
governmental experts"; and it is of vital importance 
that a Catholic moral theologian and sociologist of the 
highest competence should be among those invited to 
assist the Commission in this capacity. The Commis-
sion's terms of reference are, to make recommendations 
to the Council regarding: 

a) an international bill of rights; 
b) international declarations or conventions on civil 

liberties, the status of women, freedom of infor-
mation, and similar matters; 

c) protection of minorities ; 
d) the prevention of discrimination on grounds of 

race, sex, language or religion; 
e) any other matter concerning human rights. 

So far so good. These phrases lack the precision of 
scholastic language, but the inclusion of them in the 
general and institutional charter of a positive society of 
nations is an important step forward. Now it is a ques-
tion of making the most of this opportunity with a view 
to securing: 

1) the clearest possible definition of the inalienable 
rights of individuals and of families, of the 
Church and of human associations, and of the 
conditions normally essential to the exercise of 
those rights; 

2) the most solemn and effective recognition and 
guarantee of those rights and conditions in the 
fundamental laws of States; and 

13 



3) The most effective international control or rein-
forcement of the loyal observance of those laws. 

The Catholic Position 

The Catholic position in the matter is this. There 
are no such things, properly speaking, as Catholic rights 
or non-Catholic rights; there is no such thing as Chris-
tian justice or non-Christian justice. Justice and Truth 
can have no qualifying adjectives. It is a question of 
thrashing out what Natural Law requires, Natural Law 
being the participation by man as a rational creature in 
the Eternal Law of his Creator. Certainly it is the 
Catholic position that the Christian revelation and the 
Holy Ghost abiding in the teaching Church help man 
to use his reason properly and so to discern what his 
own true nature is, what is required to enable him to 
develop according to his nature and what mutual rights 
and duties, in .human society, arise from this nature and 
the moral law of God. There is a wealth of teaching on 
this subject in the Works of the Fathers, Doctors, and 
theologians of the Church, much of it endorsed by 
Papal authority, from the fourth century at least until 
today: much of it was quite consciously derived at the 
start from the old Stoic philosophy simply because it 
was found to accord with right reason and with the 
precepts of Christ. 

But the whole end and purpose of Catholic teaching 
and thinking in this sphere is to determine the natural 
rights and duties of all men, be they Christian or Jewish 
or Moslem or pagan, white or black, or anything else, 

14 



just because they are men, and then to defend them. 
What is true for one is true for all. It is for this reason 
that in the international sphere, as in that of national 
and municipal life, Catholics, if they are true to their 
principles, must necessarily cooperate with all men of 
good will who honestly seek to practice and defend those 
rights and liberties which essentially belong to man as 
an intelligent being against every abuse of political 
power and every economic injustice. Catholics indeed 
have a greater obligation than others to work for justice 
everywhere even in countries quite remote from their 
personal experience, and a greater incentive, because 
of the Catholic doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ, 
the Redeemer of all mankind, into which they must 
desire to see all men incorporated. 

15 



III. 

HUMAN RIGHTS WHICH ARE OFTEN 
OVERLOOKED 

It is in this spirit that we propose to examine the 
ideas put forward in the several drafts for a proposed 
international Bill of Rights which have been drawn up 
by different committees and organizations for submis-
sion to the United Nations. One of them, prepared by 
a Committee of the American Law Institute, described 
as representing the "principal cultures of the world" 
(though in fact no responsible exponent of Catholic 
moral philosophy is included in it) has been submitted 
by the Delegation of Panama; another has been drafted 
by the Inter-American Juridicial Committee; another 
submitted by the American Federation of Labor; an-
other prepared by the Committee on Human Rights of 
the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace. 
The first of these is the thinnest and poorest from the 
Christian standpoint, the second the most satisfactory; 
but all contain a great deal concerning the right of the 
individual to life and liberty with which there can be 
cordial agreement. If we pick out certain points for 
emphasis, it is because, we believe, there are some mat-
ters of great importance which are often omitted from 
such lists of rights and would enrich an International 
Bill of Rights, to the advantage of all. 

There is, however, one matter of criticism or at least 
of doubt which may be raised on these otherwise useful 
documents; it is that they reveal an uncritical accept-

16 



ance, originally derived no doubt from the old Protes-
tant doctrine of Private Judgment, of the notion that 
there must be no restriction whatever upon the expres-
sion and propagation of opinions and policies. It is time 
that those who do believe in the moral basis of civil 
society asked themselves, whether any sound principle 
or social purpose is really served by conceding complete 
freedom under the protection of the law—it could cer-
tainly not be called a right—to a body like the Commu-
nists whose dominant purpose is essentially and admit-
tedly the destruction of morality and the social order.3 

It is this body, moreover, which is the recognized repre-
sentative and apologist everywhere of that very Power 
which more than any other is now violating human 
rights on a grand scale. 

But there are three significant omissions in most of 
these drafts of an International Bill of Rights (though 
not in the Draft Declaration of the Inter-Amerffcan 
Juridical Committee) ; they are the family, religious 
education and the right of corporations to hold property. 

The Family 

Subconsciously, let us hope, too many of those who, 
with the best intentions, are concerning themselves with 

• 3 Thus Lenin, "We say with assurance that we do not believe in God . . . 
We decry all this morality borrowed from concepts exterior to class or even 
to humanity. . . . Our own morality is entirely subordinated to the interests 
of the proletariat and the needs of the class struggle." Address to the Third 
All-Russian Congress of Communist Youth; and Stalin, "The scientific con-
cept, dictatorship, means nothing more or less than power which directly 
rests on violence, which is not limited by any laws or restricted by any 
absolute rules. . . . Dictatorship means unlimited power, resting on violence 
and not on law." Problems of Leninism. 

17 



the definition of human rights have adopted the atomiz-
ing conception of état laic, the secular state. This has 
been propagated for a century and a half by French 
anti-clerical rationalism and its foreign disciples and 
adopted, as a matter of course, by the Marxist. Accord-
ing to this view, there is nothing between the individual 
citizen and the State or nation ; all intervening groups 
claiming to exist in their own right, all loyalties other 
than loyalty to the State are anathema.4 Those who, 
while rightly reacting against the tyranny of the totali-
tarian State, are themselves infected with this notion, 
can think of nothing better than to assert the rights of 
individuals as such against the State. That is not at all 
the true conception of the natural order of Society 
evolved and safeguarded by the Christian tradition. 
According to that tradition, the family, not the indi-
vidual, is the basis, the formative unit, the pillar of 
civH society, and parents have very definite rights over 
and duties toward their children. The statement of 
essential Human Rights prepared by the American 
Law Institute and its explanatory commentary contain 
not a single mention of the family or of parents. The 
present Pope, however, defining the primary duty of 
the peacemaker as that of "restoring to the human 
person the dignity which God conferred upon him from 
the beginning" lays down among "the fundamental 
rights of the person," "the right to marriage and to the 

* The logical outcome of this view is the proposition : "The State, as the 
fount and origin of all rights, itself enjoys a right which knows no limits," 
which is No. XXXIX in The Syllabus of Errors condemned by Pius IX on 
Dec. 8, 1864. 

18 



attainment of the purpose of marriage; the right to 
wedded society and home life; the right to work as an 
indispensable means for maintaining family life." In 
the same statement (Radio Address, Christmas, 1942) 
His Holiness adds that those who desire to build a true 
peace "must strive to preserve, protect or restore the 
unity of the family . . . securing to every family a home, 
in which a healthy family life may be maintained." 

The large part played by the family in Catholic 
thinking upon human rights is underlined by the spe-
cial section devoted to the family in the very compre-
hensive document prepared by a committee appointed 
by the National Catholic Welfare Conference and sub-
mitted to the Human Rights Commission on February 
2, 1947 (cf. appendix for full text). 

In short, the defense of the dignity and rights of 
the human person is bound up with the defense of that 
God-made society, the family, of which every human 
being is by birth a member and which is linked together 
by the most sacred ties. And the outraging of family life 
and the home is one of the most terrible features of the 
calamities which have recently befallen Europe. There 
has been the forcible conscription and deportation far 
from home of slave labor among most of the European 
nations by the Nazis, with its pitiful legacy of "Dis-
placed Persons," unable to return to their families 
because of the new oppression of Soviet communism. 
There has been the atrocious destruction of the lives and 
homes of Jewish families by the millions. The massive, 
involuntary transfer of whole populations by the Rus-

19 



sians and their puppet administrations from Eastern 
Poland, Eastern Germany and the Danubian countries 
—a process in which, only too often, parents and chil-
dren have been deliberately separated—is, alas, by no 
means a thing of the past. 

All these developments constitute the greatest single 
onslaught upon the institution of the Family which has 
occurred in European history. How many hundreds 
of thousands of German fathers, husbands and sons are 
still cruelly separated from their families as prisoners 
of war in Russia, and even in England and France? 
Nor is it only by such unjustifiable accompaniments or 
extensions of total war that the unity of the Family is 
assailed. The failure of Governments in the so-called 
free countries to tackle the housing problem since the 
war ended and, in particular, to make it possible for the 
young newly-wed soldiers and their wives to have a 
home of their own is having disastrous consequences. 
In England it is estimated that 20,000 additional suits 
for divorce have been added to the lists in the current 
Law Year on this account alone. 

Thus, for those who really desire to protect human 
rights in their full sense, the promotion and protection 
of family life ought to be the primary object of many of 
those duties of the State to the individual citizen which 
we find postulated or implied in the draft declarations 
on Human Rights now under discussion. For instance, 
it is to maintain the family that the right to possess and 
bequeath property is justified, and that a just distribu-
tion of material goods is required. It is to that end that 

20 



housing schemes and grants should be directed. It is to 
that end that a "fair wage" must be assured in all em-
ployment : it is to that end that the incidence of taxation 
should be determined. Should conscription for defense 
or industry be required, under the stress of public neces-
sity, then the principle of not removing husbands far 
from their wives, or mothers from the home, should be 
the general rule to be observed as far as it is humanly 
possible. A good model for this clause would be Article 
41 of the Irish Constitution, which came into operation 
on December 29, 1937. The first four paragraphs of the 
Article read as follows: 

1. 1. The State recognizes the Family as 
the natural, primary and fundamental unit 
group of Society, and as a moral institution 
possessing inalienable and imprescriptible 
rights, antecedent and superior to all posi-
tive law. 

2. The State, therefore, guarantees to pro-
tect the Family in its constitution and author-
ity, as the necessary basis of social order and 
as indispensable to the welfare of the nation 
and the State. 

• I I . 1. In particular, the State recognizes 
that, by her life within the home, woman gives 
to the State a support without which the com-
mon good cannot be achieved. 

2. The State shall, therefore, endeavor to 
ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by 
economic necessity to engage in labor to the 
neglect of their duties in the home. 

21 



Religious Education 

The rights of parents are inextricably bound up, in 
the mind of the Church, with the question of education. 
In the natural order, it is the parents' duty to bring up 
their children in the fear of God, in the practice of 
virtue and in the knowledge necessary to enable them, 
in their turn, to provide for themselves and found new 
families. If the parents entrust their children to school 
teachers, those teachers act in loco parentis (in the 
parent's place) and by no other title. In the super-
natural order, it is the duty of parents and godparents 
to see that children receive instruction in faith and 
morals from the Teaching Church, divinely instituted 
to that end. The business of the public authority is to 
create conditions in which those duties of parents, and 
of the Church, which are also their rights, may be faith-
fully discharged. Instead of which we read: "Every-
one has the right to education." What on earth does 
that mean? What education? Many young souls have 
lost their faith, in France and England for example, 
through the secular education provided for them by 
the State. Many millions of children are having their 
consciences confused and perverted today by the un-
natural nonsense and anti-religious abominations thrust 
down their throats throughout the Soviet Union or in 
Yugoslavia. It would be infinitely better for them if 
they had no "education" at all. It were better for those 
State educators to have mill-stones tied about their 
necks and to be cast into the depths of the sea. 

The last and most sacred recorded command of 

22 



Christ to His Apostles before His Ascension was to go 
forth and teach all nations; and nothing is more essen-
tial to the Church in every country than to secure the 
freedom and the material means which are necessary to 
the discharge of this mission of teaching. If, in fact, 
it is not possible to obtain legal recognition of this right 
in the fundamental laws of States, as belonging specifi-
cally to the Church (which is recognized, for instance, 
in Italy, Portugal, Spain, the Catholic Cantons of 
Switzerland, the Netherlands, and in practice in 
Ireland and Scotland), then it is best to fall back upon 
the natural law and to insist that parents have the right 
to send their children to the schools in which teaching 
conforms to their own convictions. A clause to that 
effect was inserted in the recent Education Act (1946s) 
in the United Kingdom, thanks to the insistence of 
Catholic Members of both Houses of Parliament and 
the good will of many of their colleagues: upon it have 
been based—and usually with success—the claims of the 
local "Catholic Parents' and Electors' Associations" to 
equality of treatment in regard to the cost and provision 
of transportation for children attending the Catholic 
schools—a matter of great moment for so scattered a 
Catholic population. To take another example, the 
American and British Occupation Authorities in Ger-

5 " G E N E R A L PRINCIPLE TO BE OBSERVED BY MINISTER AND LOCAL EDUCATION 

AUTHORITIES. 

(Clause) 76. In the exercise and performance of all powers and duties 
conferred and imposed upon them by this Act, the Minister and local educa-
tion authorities shall have regard to the general principle that, so fa r as is 
compatible with the provision of efficient instruction and training and the 
avoidance of unreasonable public expenditure, pupils are to be educated in 
accordance with the wishes of their parents." 

23 



many, having arbitrarily declined to recognize the con-
tinued validity of the Concordat between the Holy See 
and the Reich, the reopening of the confessional 
schools in their Zones was made entirely dependent 
upon the votes of the parents. Whereupon the Catholic 
parents voted by overwhelming majorities in favor of 
sending their children to Catholic schools, as did, for 
their part, a large number of Protestant parents in 
respect to the Protestant schools, to the great advantage 
of religion in Germany. 

A provision in an International Bill or Convention 
upon Human Rights stipulating either positively, that 
all parents have the, right to send their children to 
schools which conform to their religious convictions or, 
negatively, that the State shall never compel children 
to attend schools in which the teaching does not corre-
spond to the beliefs of their parents, would save a 
principle upon which the Catholic Church can never 
compromise, and at the same time offer equal oppor-
tunities, as citizens, to Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, 
Moslem, or other religious bodies. 

Corporate Properly 

But education raises the whole question of school 
buildings, just as "freedom of worship" is quite unreal 
unless it implies the right to build and possess places of 
worship; and this is only one of the indispensable 
material requirements of the "association for religious 
purposes" or "association for educational purposes," if 
we may accept such a description in Natural Law, of 

24 



an ecclesiastical organization or of the Church itself. 
The same considerations apply to all associations formed 
for legitimate purposes, cultural, vocational, profes : 

sional, scientific or recreational. Unless such bodies 
have the right to acquire and own property as corporate 
persons in law, the rights to assembly, worship, and 
association, though written into National Constitutions 
and confirmed by an International Treaty, may well be 
quite illusory. It has for nearly a century been the 
commonplace of anti-Christian Governments and Par-
ties, to say that freedom of conscience and worship and 
association is guaranteed to all, and then, by confiscating 
the buildings, lands or other property of the Church, 
religious communities or other organizations, which 
they do not like, to make the exercise of this freedom 
nearly or wholly impossible. That was the trick of the 
Lois laics in France; that is the trick of the Constitution 
of the USSR; that is the trick of Rakocy and his clique 
of Muscovites whose domination has been imposed 
upon Hungary—to protest that they are not persecuting 
the Church, but, by confiscating without compensation 
all the land, on the revenues of which the Catholic 
Colleges and Schools depend (and by other indirect 
means of pressure) to make it virtually impossible for 
Christian education to continue. It is the same, to an 
even more fantastic extent, in Yugoslavia. 

In view of this long and bitter experience and of the 
tendency of the State-worshippers everywhere to make 
it difficult for any associations or organizations, which 
are not sufficiently subservient to Government, to have 

25 



the material means of permanent existence, it is dis-
turbing to find either no reference to the right to prop-
erty in various International Bills of Rights now in 
circulation or, if there be a reference, as in the draft of 
the American Law Institute, to find it postulated only 
of individuals. It should be laid down that all institu-
tions, organizations and associations existing for pur-
poses not inconsistent with the Bill of Rights as a whole, 
have the right in their corporate capacities to erect, 
acquire, and possess buildings and to own land, funds 
and other property necessary or convenient for the 
maintenance and development of their corporate life 
and activities. Further, as in the case of privately owned 
property, these possessions should not be requisitioned 
or sequestered by the State, in the exercise of its power 
of eminent domain, for a necessary public purpose, 
without just compensation. 

Civil Rights: Precision Needed 

In considering the list of rights to be safeguarded, 
we have not enumerated those which are accepted by 
all or nearly all reformers who are genuinely in revolt 
against the tyranny into which the power of the State 
has degenerated in this generation—freedom of opinion, 
worship and speech; freedom from arbitrary arrest; 
the right to a fair trial ; equality of civil rights, etc. We 
should all be agreed upon the necessity of reaffirming 
these points, though to have any practical effect in the 
existing condition of the world, several of them would 
have to be phrased very much more precisely. For 

26 



example, can anyone believe that the extremely ambigu-
ous sentiment, "Everyone has the right to take part in 
the government of his State" would suffice to annul the 
Local Government Franchise Bill introduced by the 
Government of Northern Ireland for the purpose of 
restoring a high property test, based on rateable values, 
as the condition of voting in municipal elections, and so 
depriving the bulk of the Catholic Irish in the Northern 
Counties and Boroughs of their right to vote? Or would 
it cause a comparable reform in the laws and customs of 
certain Southern States in the United States in relation 
to the Negroes? It is doubtful. 

Obviously no one has the "right" to be a member of 
the government—a mere handful of people under any 
constitution—except he or she be chosen or elected ac-
cording to the laws of the land for that high office. Does 
it mean that everyone has the right to vote for the Na-
tional legislature and, when there is a separate election 
of the head of the State (as in the American Republics) 
to take part in it? Even so, such an Article would still 
make it possible to exclude men and women wholesale 
from voting in local municipal, cantonal, or provincial 
elections which are of great importance in many parts 
of the world. And here, though any international 
Declaration of Rights would no doubt contain some 
general provision against discrimination on grounds of 
race, color, religion, language or sex, it would be well 
to lay that down specifically in regard to the exercise 
of civil rights strictly speaking, i.e., the right to equal 
participation in civil society—voting, eligiblity for 

27 



election to all public bodies, appointment to public 
office, and "no taxation without representation." If we 
are to be democratic, let us do it thoroughly. 

This raises the whole question, whether any short 
minimum statement of rights and liberties in general 
terms, however generous the intentions and explana-
tions of its advocates, is really likely to be of the slight-
est use or whether it would probably share the fate of 
the Atlantic Charter, now unhappily as dead (diplo-
matically speaking) as mutton. The easier it is for the 
delegates of many countries to accept such a statement, 
the more likely are they to sign it with their tongues in 
their cheeks and the firm conviction that their Govern-
ments need do nothing whatever about it. For, be it 
remembered, what is proposed is the reversal of power-
ful, existing trends; all this is directed against the pre-
tensions of Governments; it proposes to clip the wings 
of their sovereignty. In examining the need for greater 
precision and realism and suggesting the necessary 
priorities, we have concentrated upon five institutions 
which are a great deal more important to the full de-
velopment of the human person and the exercise of his 
rights than old-age pensions, social insurance and edu-
cation about nothing in particular: they are the Church, 
the Home, the Christian School, corporate rights to 
property and a really fair electoral system. The fact 
that adequate safeguards on these points will be difficult 
to obtain makes it all the more worth while struggling 
for them. There are two other matters which require 
special attention in the present condition of the world. 

28 



The Right of Migration 

St. Augustine, seeking in the fourth century of the 
Christian era to define the conditions in which it may 
be lawful to wage war, cited, as an example, the wars 
of the Hebrews against the Gentiles on their return 
from exile in Egypt to the Holy Land, which he de-
fended on the purely rational ground that "harmless 
transit" was refused to them, but this by the law of 
human society should in all equity be open to them.6 

And there is nothing more constantly accepted in the 
whole tradition of the Law of Nations than the right 
of human beings to travel and trade peacefully and 
settle in any part of the world. Clearly there may be 
exceptional circumstances, as for instance the need of 
prudent provisions for the social welfare of the popula-
tion of a state or for public order, or physical difficul-
ties of housing, feeding or employment which may 
justify temporary restrictions by a Government upon 
this natural right. But nothing excuses the modern at-
tempts to annihilate it. Francis de Vittoria, wrestling 
in the sixteenth century with the new colonial problems 
resulting from the Spanish discoveries of America and 
the relations between the newcomers and the native In-
dians, says "It was permissible from the beginning of 
the world (when everything was in common) for any-
one to set forth and travel wheresoever he would. Now 
this was not taken away by the division of property, for 
it was never the intention of the peoples to destroy by 

6 St. Augustine's Commentary on the Book of Numbers "Innoxius enim 
transitus denegebatur qui humanae societatis aequissimo jure patere debebat" 
c.f. Decretals of Gratian. Pars Sec. Cau9a XXIII Qu. ii. C. iii. 

29 



that division the reciprosity and common uses which 
prevailed among men.'" The same author goes on to 
argue that if people migrating—as the Spaniards of 
those days were doing—to another country have chil-
dren born there, "it seems that they cannot be barred 
either from citizenship or from the advantages enjoyed: 
by other citizens." 

In short, the good old conception of the State is that 
of an organization of civil society with certain neces-
sary but very limited and relative rights over human 
beings. Its primary purpose is to maintain order within 
its frontiers so that those who live, visit, trade, or settle 
in that territory may pass their lives in peace. 

The newcomers, from time to time, may simply be 
visitors, in which case, the Law of Nations requires that 
they be received hospitably. "It is reckoned aniong-
all nations inhumane," says Vittoria, "to treat visitors 
and foreigners badly without some special cause, while,, 
on the other hand it is humane and correct to treat them 
well."8 They may be traders; and it is not too much to. 
say that the main trend of the Christian tradition is in 
favor of free trade and freedom of the seas and that 
Taparelli d'Azeglio, the greatest modern Catholic 
writer upon Natural Law, expressed the mind of the 
Church when he wrote: "In the design of the Creator,, 
commerce becomes the great social link which unites-
all nations in one single society."® They may be 
refugees from political oppression, in which case there 

7 Relectio la "De Indis" Section 3 "De legitimis titulis." 
«Ibid. 
? Saggio Teoretico di Diritto Naturale lib. VI-1297. 

30 



is the natural obligation, reinforced by Christian char-
ity, to come to their aid and give them shelter, an obliga-
tion which positive law, national and international, has 
long recognized in the Right of Asylum. This is but 
a practical application of that duty to act in defense 
of the rights of one's fellow-men, in support of which 
Catholic authorities from the earliest ages have quoted 
that striking injunction in the Book of Proverbs: "De-
liver them that are led to death, and those that are led 
to death, forbear not to deliver. If thou say 'I have not 
strength enough,' He that seeth into thy heart, He 
understandeth and nothing deceiveth the keeper of thy 
soul."10 

Finally, families or individuals are impelled to 
seek new homes abroad owing to the pressure of popu-
lation or economic poverty in their native countries: 
today the great free nations of the New World, the 
United States and Canada, are themselves living monu-
ments to the liberal and humane principle which al-
lowed and aided such migration during the nineteenth 
century. The present Pope, Pius XII , bases the case 
for such migration upon the natural "right of the family 
to a vital space." He says that "when families migrat-
ing from one spot to another, go elsewhere in search 
of a new homeland, emigration attains its natural scope 
—We mean the more favorable distribution of men 
upon the earth's surface, suitable to colonies of agri-
cultural workers: that surface which God created and 

loProv. XXIV. 11, 12. See especially argument based on this in St. 
Ambrose, De. Offiiciis, I, XXXVI. 

31 



prepared for the use of all. If the two parties, those 
who agree to leave their native land and those who 
agree to admit the newcomers, remain anxious to elim-
inate as far as possible all obstacles to the birth and 
growth of real confidence—all those affected by such 
a transference of people and places will profit by the 
transaction: the families will receive a plot of ground 
which will be native land for them in the true sense 
of the word; the thickly inhabited countries will be re-
lieved and their peoples will acquire new friends in 
foreign countries; and the States which receive the 
immigrants will acquire industrious citizens."11 

Now the whole of this long-established Christian 
and', in the highest sense, liberal tradition of the free-
dom of human beings to travel, trade and settle abroad 
for peaceful purposes, has in recent times been frus-
trated by the pretensions of the Sovereign State as never 
before in human history. How far the cut in migra-
tion (for what then looked like valid economic 
grounds) from the over-populated countries of Europe 
and Asia by the United States and, in varying degrees, 
Canada, the greater Latin American countries, Aus-
tralia, and South Africa in the last quarter of a century 
was a contributory cause of the recent war, is a study 
in itself. Almost all historians agree that the reduction 
to tiny proportions of emigration from Italy helped to 
breed Fascism in that country. 

But that is only one way in which the right of migra-
tion is denied. Nowadays to travel abroad, still less to 

11 La Solenuita delta Pentecoste, June 1, 1941. 

32 



settle abroad, has become a virtual impossibility for 
most people, and few of us realize how the whole horrid 
apparatus of restriction, passports, visas, exit permits, 
exchange regulations, immigration quotas, and the 
barbed-wire entanglements of bureaucracy, through 
which the would-be traveler or immigrant has to fight 
his way, has all grown up in a single life-time. 

The State now arrogates to itself the right, not only 
to take reasonable precautions with regard to people 
leaving or entering its territory, but to decide absolutely 
whether any human being may move about or not. I t 
is one of the worst abuses of sovereignty. It finds its 
most extreme form in the rigid excommunication from 
all contact with the outer world imposed upon its sub-
jects by the Soviet Government, a policy which utterly 
prevents the true and friendly understanding between 
the Russian people and other nations which could only 
come from free travel and intercourse. It finds ex-
pression in the herding of political refugees, euphem-
istically called Displaced Persons, in camps and 
the intolerable treatment meted out to them. On the 
one hand, representatives of the very totalitarian Gov-
ernments which are the cause of their exile are permit-
ted to try and decoy them back by promises or threats 
—an unprecedented violation of the Right of 
Asylum—; on the other hand, the "Western Powers," 
who protest against Communist repression in Eastern 
Europe, refuse to receive them into their own coun-
tries. All this amounts to a conception which sees in 
men and women nothing but chattels of the totalitarian 

33 



or bureaucratic State, to be retained, refused, or used 
only as their masters determine, to the great moral and 
material impoverishment of mankind. One of the most 
important of human rights, therefore, which now need 
to be reasserted and defended, is the right to travel and 
migrate freely for peaceful purposes, subject only to 
the reasonable requirements of public order and eco-
nomic welfare. 

Preserving Acquired Rights 

The Pope declares that it is "the essential task of 
every public authority . . . to protect the intangible 
sphere of man's personal rights,"12 and describes a Con-
stitution conformable with the divine will as one "grant-
ing him a sphere of rights immune from arbitrary 
attack."13 Judge Edward S. Dore, in an admirable 
essay on "Human Rights and the Law" in the Ford-
ham Law Review, March 1946, lays stress upon the 
fact that the former arising from man's spiritual nature 
and destiny, necessarily take precedence over the latter, 
that is positive law, which may define and make ex-
plicit, but never contravene Natural Law. "Law is 
reason, and that which is not reason should never be 
law. Thus natural law may be defined as the order 
discernible by reason according to which man should 
seek to fulfill his nature as man." 

It is quite in the spirit of this return to first prin-
ciples, forced upon serious minds by the unprecedented 

12 Summi Pontificates, October 20, 1937. 
13 Radio Address, Christmas 19*2. 

34 



outrages upon the fundamental liberies of man, that 
the proposed international Bill of Rights should lay 
down, briefly and broadly, certain basic principles of 
personal and civic freedom which have been the object 
of attack; that it should be concerned, in other words, 
with natural law, rather than with positive law, muni-
cipal or international. But this approach is not with-
out danger if it goes no further than that. 

The defender of personal rights is not faced with 
virgin soil. There are many growths of positive law 
in every State and in international practice, some in-
deed needing to be rooted out, some indifferent, but 
many good and necessary, the fruits of hard struggles 
in the past. The danger, especially in States where 
National Constitutions, laws and treaty obligations 
have been thrown into the melting-pot by the cataclysm 
of Nazi domination, the war and the Soviet invasion 
of Europe is this: that the present masters of these terri-
tories may use a very general international declaration 
on human rights (which they could without too much 
ingenuity profess to be observing), as the pretext for 
ignoring or failing to renew many precise and useful 
provisions which existed in the pre-war or pre-Nazi 
Constitutions and laws. It will be necessary, therefore, 
even in the shortest International Bill of Rights to safe-
guard acquired rights of individuals, associations, insti-
tutions, racial, religious and linguistic minorities and 
the Church itself. It would be prudent in any case to 
include an article similar to Article IX of the American 
Constitution—"The enumeration in the Constitution 

35 



of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or dis-
parage others retained by the people." 

It would be wise, further, to postulate a) that inter-
national obligations relating to the rights of persons, 
groups or institutions, undertaken prior to the war, or, 
say, March 1938, the date of the Austrian Anschluss, 
which was the beginning of Hitler's territorial con-
quest—should retain their full vigor unless replaced 
by new bilateral or multilateral agreements; and also 
b) that provisions inserted in the fundamental laws 
or organic laws of States under this head in virtue of 
earlier international treaties be preserved inviolate. 
The former would safeguard the various Concordats 
with the Holy See, unless replaced by new instruments 
voluntarily negotiated, and the international Labor 
Conventions ratified before 1938, as well as any since 
ratified; the latter would safeguard (legally, at least, 
if not actually) the rights incorporated in the funda-
mental laws of the Balkan States, in consequence of 
the Act of Berlin (1878) and later in those of Germany, 
Austria, Hungary and the three "Succession States" in 
virtue of the Treaties of Versailles, St. Germain, 
Neuilly and Trianon (1919-1920). The importance 
of the old "Minorities Clauses" of these treaties was 
not only that they were placed under the largely in-
effectual protection of the Council of the League of 
Nations; but that the general principles upon which 
they were based—such as the equality of all citizens 
without discrimination before the law, in the exercise 
of their civic rights and their eligibility for public 

36 



office—had to be "written in" to the fundamental laws 
of the States which were newly recognized, or whose 
frontiers had been modified by the Peace Settlement. 

The same principle should apply to the safeguard-
ing, in the new Declaration of general obligations 
undertaken by the Colonial powers in the interest of the 
native populations (e.g. at the Congo Basin Treaty, 
signed at Berlin on February 26th, 1885, relating to 
the suppression of the slave trade, the liquor traffic 
and the arms traffic and freedom for the Christian 
Missions and in the last Peace Settlement) as well as 
the various Mandates which, of course, concern a few 
territories only, and will no doubt soon be transformed 
into United Nations Trusteeship Agreements. 

The object, in the whole of this field of positive 
international law, should be to extend to as many na-
tions as possible, so far as they are applicable, any use-
ful provisions for the protection or advancement of 
human rights already accepted by or imposed upon a 
certain number of them, but at least not to throw away 
what exists in the meantime. For that would be to 
make the best the enemy of the good. 

37 



III. 

JURIDICAL PROTECTION NECESSARY 

National Laws 

The precedents recalled above suggest that the only 
effective method of advance is to bind Governments, as 
High Contracting Parties to a General Treaty, to incor-
porate the provisions of the Bill of Rights in the funda-
mental laws of their States. We propose, in other words, 
that the practical object of the Human Rights Commis-
sion of the United Nations should be to produce a 
convention "open to signature" by those States which 
are willing to undertake its obligations. They should 
undertake either to give legislative effect to the Bill as 
a whole, or else to lay before their legislative authorities 
amendments to existing laws so as to make them conform 
in all respects to the requirements of the Bill. They 
should further promise to abrogate all existing laws and 
administrative decrees inconsistent with it and to enact 
no such laws or regulations in the future. The practical 
experience of the International Labor Organization is 
a strong argument for this mode of operation. The ILO, 
after all, is the one major organ of the League of Nations 
which has survived the general debacle; and it is no 
accident. For its definite achievements in the realm of 
industrial legislation have substantially improved the 
lot of great numbers of workers, men, women and chil-
dren, in the fields and in the factories, in the mines and 

38 



at sea. And this has been done, first by the careful 
discussion of Conventions in the International Labor 
Conferences; then by obliging member States to bring 
Conventions before their legislatures for ratification— 
9ixty-six Conventions are now in operation—then by 
requiring them to report to each conference upon the 
steps taken to implement the Conventions. No doubt, 
there has been an evasion of certain conventions, and 
the war in Europe, at least temporarily, destroyed much 
of their practical value. But it is broadly true to say 
that particular and important rights of large groups of 
human beings have been legally protected in this way. 
They have been provided with juridical recognition of 
their rights, and they have the remedy of appeal to the 
courts in the event of any infraction of the laws adopted, 
whether regarding hours of work, security against in-
dustrial accidents or disease, the weekly day of rest, 
unemployment insurance or any of the other safeguards 
of fair conditions of labor which have been agreed upon. 
Why should not other and more universal rights of 
individuals, of families and associations receive the pro-
tection of positive law in the same way? 

This was the objective set before us by Pope Pius 
X I I when he said: 

A constitution conformable to the Divine will 
gives a man a right to juridical security and 
accordingly grants him a sphere of rights im-
mune from all arbitrary attack . . . this sup-
poses a tribunal and a judge taking their 
direction from law carefully defined; clear, 
legal principles which cannot be upset by un-

39 



warranted appeal to a supposed popular senti-
ment or by merely utilitarian considerations; 
and recognition of the principle that the State 
and its officials are under the obligation of 
revising and withdrawing measures incom-
patible with the liberty, the property, the 
honor and the health of individuals.14 

The terms of reference of the Human Rights Com-
mission of the United Nations are not particularly lucid, 
but it seems that, under paragraph (b), the preparation 
of one or more international conventions, i.e., general 
treaties, is contemplated, as well as the framing, under 
paragraph (a), of a Bill of Rights. The proposal put 
forward in this paper is that such a Convention should 
be drawn up, binding the contracting parties to carry 
out the terms of the Bill in the laws and administrative 
practice of their respective countries. 

International Control 

The same principle of providing juridical rather 
than political protection of human rights should be 
followed in the international as in the national sphere, 
when it comes to contriving some check by the United 
Nations upon the implementing of the Bill of Rights 
by national governments. Under the former Minorities 
Treaties, aggrieved persons or groups might petition 
the Council of the League, but the Secretariat had the 
power of deciding whether petitions were technically 
"receivable" or not, a most unsatisfactory procedure. 
As to the new international organization, experience 

1« Radio Address, Christmas 1942. 

40 



has proved how remote from impartial and dispassion-
ate justice are the political maneuvers for position, the 
thrusts and parries of national spokesmen in the Gen-
eral Assembly and its Committees and even more in the 
Security Council. The Court of Justice alone has a 
detached, legal character. The judges have supposedly 
been elected on their personal qualifications and not as 
the delegates of States; and though it remains to be seen 
how the Communist judges will conduct themselves, it 
is at least possible that the majority, who are experi-
enced international lawyers, will succeed in judging 
cases on their merits, as did the members of the Nurem-
berg tribunal. 

How is any alleged breach of the proposed Conven-
tion on Human Rights to be brought before the Inter-
national Court? The High Contracting Parties might 
indeed agree that any question of the interpretation of 
Convention and of the Bill of Rights contained in it 
should come within the competence of the Court; but 
the difficulty is to decide how to lay before the Court 
any serious allegations that the terms of the Bill have 
not been implemented or have been violated. Article 34 
of the Statute of the Court reads: "Only States may be 
parties in cases before the Court." One can hardly 
imagine a Government, against which a group of its 
citizens are making accusations, taking the initiative 
in referring the matter to the Court. Should another 
State take the initiative? It is certainly undesirable as 
a general rule that the only remedy should lie in the 
Government of one State laying an accusation against 

41 



another on the ground of its ill-treating its own nationals. 
Such a procedure might in an extreme case be the only 
way of bringing gross and continuous oppression to the 
bar of international judgment. But it is far from con-
ducive to civil peace and unity for a group or section 
of the nation to be obliged to look to a foreign power as 

its advocate.13 # 
Intervention in a State's internal affairs, if it be 

prima facie required on the ground of the non-observ-
ance of international obligations, should preferably be 
undertaken in the name of the international commnuity 
as a whole, that is by the United Nations. But the 
United Nations could not act in this matter without 
sufficient evidence; and direct evidence could only come 
from the persons or organizations aggrieved. Some-
thing like the following procedure might attain the 
desired end. 

Each High Contracting Party to the Convention on 

Human Rights should agree, as part of the Convention 

itself:— 
a) that the interpretation of the Convention 

should be within the jurisdiction of the Court, 
including the investigation of any fact which, if 
established, would constitute a breach of the 
Convention ;16 

b) That persons, associations and organiza-
tions, alleging their failure to obtain satisfaction 
from the national courts in respect of the implé-

is The fate of the Christian communities in the old Ottoman Empire (in 

which France was nominally the protector of the Catholics, and Russia of 
the Orthodox) is not a good advertisement of this method. 

16 Article 36. 

42 



menting of any article of the Convention, should 
have the right to petition the United Nations and 
to forward their claim in due legal form to the 
Secretariat; the High Contracting Party to forward 
at the same time all the documents in the case and 
its own observations; 

c) that the Secretary General, when seized of 
any such petition, should request the Court, through 
its Registrar, to designate an expert under Article 
50 of the Statute to investigate the matter and 
report to the Court;17 

d) that, if the Court having considered its 
expert's report, should decide that a full examina-
tion of the alleged infraction of the Convention 
seemed desirable, the Secretary General, in the 
name of the United Nations, should request the 
Courts to give an advisory opinion on it, under 
Article 65 of the Statute; 

e) that the High Contracting Party would 
give every facility to the Court and its agents in 
obtaining the necessary evidence, and would give 
effect to the advisory opinion of the Court. 

17 Article 50 reads: "The Court may, at any time, entrust any individual, ' 
body, bureau, commission or other organization that it may select, with the 
task of carrying out an enquiry or giving an expert opinion." 

43 



III. 

CONCLUSION 

All this may seem very technical and legalistic; but 
it is of little value to speak of the United Nations 
"promoting and encouraging respect for human rights 
and fundamental freedoms" without any clear idea of 
how it could be done within the framework of the 
existing institutions. The above suggestions may at 
least serve as the basis of practical discussion. 

Apart from dwelling upon certain rights of indi-
viduals, families and associations which we believe 
particularly need to be reaffirmed, our main suggestion 
has been that the best way of proceeding would be to 
draw up a Convention, or General Treaty, upon Human 
Rights, and to open it to the signature of States willing 
to accede to it. This has been a very common procedure 
throughout the life of the League of Nations and at the 
diplomatic conferences of the past. We believe this to 
be greatly preferable to the attempt, at all cost, to get 
universality at the start, which in the existing condition 
of the world could only be one more hollow mockery. 
We must accept the fact that there is no automatic 
device by which we can possibly hope to secure in the 
immediate future the defense of men's rights and liber-
ties. Nothing can be achieved without the education of 
public opinion and the healthy pressure upon govern-
ments of bodies of opinion inspired by the right prin-

44 



ciples; and that is only possible where public opinion 
can, in fact, be instructed and mobilized in conditions 
of relative freedom. Nothing could force the Com-
munist governments to sign such a Convention, if they 
decided not to, or to implement it. As to the other 
Governments of the world, there are not a few which 
have skeletons in their closets, a few of which we have 
rudely revealed in these pages. Should the Govern-
ments of countries, in which ordinary people and bodies 
of public opinion are not free to express themselves, 
decline to sign and ratify the proposed Convention, that 
is no reason at all why the Governments of free nations, 
and especially those which are the heirs of Christian 
and humane traditions, should not set about putting 
their own houses in order. By joining in the acceptance 
of those international obligations which we have pro-
posed, they would raise high the standard of human 
dignity and liberty in the world. The defense and im-
plementing of the fundamental rights of men, women 
and children, and the promotion of their spiritual and 
material well-being, is not the mere plaything of one 
small commission or sub-commission out of many: 
it is, for the Christian, the very end and purpose of all 
politics, national and international. Indeed the preven-
tion of war itself, is, in the last analysis, a means to 
that end. 

If that view were to gain ground and the protection 
of human rights, in the fullest sense of those words, 
came to be regarded as among the prime purposes of 
the United Nations, the whole moral situation of that 

45 



institution might be transformed. Ordinary men and 
women throughout the world might begin to feel that 
it was not merely a piece of inter-governmental ma-
chinery, but that they themselves had a stake in it. Like 
the American Constitution for the citizens of the United 
States, it would be something which existed to protect 
their rights. As signatures to the Convention on human 
rights increased and as it came to be applied in one 
country after another, the United Nations organiza-
tion, now sadly lacking in popular confidence, might, 
after all, discover—that it had a soul. 

46 



Appendix 

A DECLARATION OF RIGHTS 

Drafted by a Committee Appointed by the National 

Catholic Welfare Conference, February 2, 1947 

(The first and second parts of this Declaration of 
Rights have special reference to the contents of this 
pamphlet.) 

General Preamble 

God, the Creator of the human race, has charged 
man with obligations arising from his personal dignity, 
from his immortal destiny, and from his relationships 
as a social being. These obligations are in reference to 
the Creator, to himself, to his family and fellowmen, 
to the State and to the community of States. For the 
fulfillment of these obligations man is endowed with 
certain natural, inalienable rights. These obligations 
and rights form the substance of the natural moral law 
which can be known by reason. 

Obligations and rights are correlative. At all times 
the obligation to respect the rights of others operates 
against the arbitrary use of rights. 

Suitable opportunity to discharge fundamental obli-
gations in the various and separate situations of life is 
a right which cannot be justly denied. For man's use 
God has provided the basic resources of this world. 

The unity of the human race under God is not 

47 



broken by geographical distance or by diversity of 
civilization, culture and economy, and the adequate use 
of the world's resources by all peoples is not to be denied 
because of these factors. 

Weakness resulting from conquest or imperfection 
in governmental organization should not be used as a 
pretext to reject the fundamental rights of man or to 
impede their legitimate exercise. 

The order of rights outlined below progresses 
through the individual, the family, the State and the 
community of States. 

PART I 

The Rights of the Human Person 

Preamble 
The dignity of man, created in the image of God, 

obligates him to live in accordance with law imposed by 
God. Consequently, he is endowed as an individual and 
as a member of society with rights which are inalienable. 

Among these rights are: 
1) The right to life and bodily integrity from the 

moment of conception, regardless of physical or mental 
condition, except in just punishment for crime. 

2) The right to serve and worship God in private 
and in public. 

3) The right to religious formation through educa-
tion and association. 

4) The right to personal liberty under just law. 
5) The right to the equal protection of just law 

regardless of sex, nationality, color or creed. 

48 



6) The right to freedom of expression of informa-
tion and of communication in accordance with truth 
and justice. 

7) The right to choose and freely to maintain a 
state of life, married or single, lay or religious. 

8) The right to education suitable for the mainte-
nance and development of man's dignity as a human 
person. 

9) The right to petition the government for redress 

of grievances. 
10) The right to a nationality. 
11 ) The right of access to the means of livelihood, 

by migration when necessary. 
12) The right of association and peaceable assembly. 
13) The right to work and choose one's occupation. 
14) The right to personal ownership, use and dis-

posal of property subject to the rights of others and to 
limitations in the interest of the general welfare. 

15) The right to a living wage. 
16) The right to collective bargaining. 
17) The right to associate by industries and profes-

sions to obtain economic justice and the general welfare. 
18) The right to assistance from society, if neces-

sary from the State, in distress of person or family. 

PART II 

The Rights Pertaining to the Famliy 

Preamble 
The family is the natural and fundamental group 

unit of society and is endowed by the Creator with 

49 



inalienable rights antecedent to all positive law. The 
family does not exist for the State, but on the other 
hand is not independent. 

Among these rights are: 
1) The right to marry, to establish a home and 

beget children. 
2) The right to economic security sufficient for the 

stability and independence of the family. 
3) The right to the protection of maternity. 
4) The right to educate the children. 
5) The right to maintain, if necessary by public 

protection and assistance, adequate standards of child 
welfare within the family circle. 

6) The right to assistance, through community 
services in the education and care of the children. 

7) The right to housing adapted to the needs and 
functions of family life. 

8) The right to immunity of the home from search 
and trespass. 

9) The right to protection against immoral condi-
tions in the community. 

PART i n 
The Domestic Rights of States 

Preamble 
Political authority is entrusted by God to nations, 

which are endowed with rights and charged with the 
obligation of establishing justice, of promoting the 
general welfare of their citizens and of cooperating 
with other nations in furthering the universal welfare 
of mankind. 

50 



It is the right of all peoples that are capable of self-
government to organize politically and to function as 
States upon equal terms with other States. 

Among these rights are: 
1) The right to enact just laws binding in conscience. 
2) The right to establish courts of justice and to 

enforce the observance of law with adequate sanctions. 
3) The right to demand of its citizens respect for 

the rights of minorities. 
4) The right to tax by adequate and equitable means 

in order to carry out its proper functions. 
5) The right to exercise eminent domain when de-

manded by the common welfare. 
6) The right to require that its people receive an 

education suitable for citizenship. 
7) The right to defend itself against domestic 

violence. 
8) The right to watch over, stimulate, restrain and 

order the private activities of individuals and groups 
in the degree that is necessary for the common good. 

9) The right to regulate operations of international 
economic groups functioning within its own boundaries. 

10) The right to adopt in time of emergency special 
measures necessary for the common good. 

PART IV 

The Rights of States in the International Community 
Preamble 

The human family constitutes an organic unity or 
a world society. 

51 



The States of the world have the right and the duty 
to associate and to organize in the international com-
munity for their common welfare. 

The indispensable foundation of all peaceful inter-
course among nations and an essential condition of 
juridical relations among them are common trust and 
respect for the plighted word. Treaties and agree-
ments must not be considered subject to arbitrary 
unilateral repudiation. 

Every State has certain fundamental rights in the 
international community. 

Among these rights are: 

1) The right to exist as a member of the inter-
national community and to be protected in its national 
life and integrity against acts of aggression by any other 
State or States. 

2) The right to independence in the determination 
of its own domestic and foreign policies in accordance 
with the principles of morality, and subject to the 
obligations of international law. 

3) The right to juridical equality with other States 
in the family of nations. 

4) The right to membership in the organized inter-
national community and to the benefits of international 
cooperation. 

5) The right to the assistance of the international 
community in securing the fulfillment of the terms of a 
just treaty or agreement. 

6) The right to obtain from the international com-

52 



munity redress of grievances arising from unjust treaties 
imposed by force. 

7) The right to the revision of treaties which are 
no longer in accord with fundamental justice. 

8) The right to recourse to the procedures of pacific 
settlement established by the international community 
for disputes which diplomatic negotiations have failed 
to settle. 

9) The right to maintain political, economic and 
social intercourse with other States upon equal terms. 

10) The right of access, upon equal terms, to the 
markets and raw materials of the world necessary for 
its own life as a people. 

11) The right to protect its own natural resources 
and economic life from unjust exploitation. 

12) The right to the assistance of the international 
community in time of economic or social distress. 

13) The right to grant asylum to refugees from 

injustice. 

53 



STUDY CLUB OUTLINE 

Lesson I 

The rise of the totalitarian State in Russia, Italy and Germany 

since the last war caused Catholic thinkers to emphasize more and more 

the dignity of the human personality. 

By the human person they meant man as a spiritual being. The 

most important thing about man is not his citizenship but his soul. 

Totalitarianism disposed of human beings like cattle, regarded them as 

cogs in a machine. Those who shared the inheritance of the Christian 

values of things were shocked. The war gave'urgency to the battle for 

human rights. It was for human rights that the war was begun. 

But as the war progressed the original intentions became confused 

and vitiated. It became impossible to know what was meant by 

"Democracy" glibly used as a common vocabulary by British, Ameri-

can and Russian propagandists. Similarly it became impossible to know 

what was meant by "Fascism." The false simplification of war-time 

propaganda lumped together the war aims of the Soviet Union and 

the Western Allies. When the war was over it was easy for the USSR 

to continue to call "democrats" those who were subservient to Soviet 

policy; while "Fascists" were those who resented or resisted it. Mean-

while millons of honest but ill-informed people in the Western World 

have become blinded to the fact that this pseudo-democracy is itself 

the chief enemy of those human rights which we set out to vindicate 

in 1939. 

It is very doubtful if any "compromise" text of a bill for human 

rights embracing both Soviet and Western conceptions will be of any 

real value. There are those who believe that there is a peculiar merit 

in compromise, regardless of the moral or practical value of the content 

or object of the compromise. But to start with the proposition that any 

declaration or convention upon human rights must necessarily be some-

thing which Russian communism can accept is to condemn such a 

measure to sterility. 

Dangers from the "Left" do not come only from the sphere of Com-

munist hegemony. They exist for the human person also wherever 

54 



there is a powerful trend in the direction of statolotry. In these cir-

cumstances the growth of bureaucratic power, the nationalization of 

the means of production, the control of manpower, the abolition of 

private charities, the destruction of the material conditions of personal 

and family independence, the State monopoly of education, construct a 

mechanism of political omnipotence. 

There are dangers from the "Right" as well. The Spanish Falange 

has many of the most objectionable features of National Socialism 

combined with the single-party pretensions of Fascism. Racial hatred 

begets monstrous injustices. There are threats in the capitalist world to 

just conditions of labor, and an abuse of industrial and financial power. 

The "old Order" has frequently done violence to private liberties 

and, by a compromising patronage, to the Church's independence. 

All these considerations add up to an overwhelming case against 

leaving human beings entirely to the tender mercies of the rulers of the 

Sovereign State. The rights of individuals should be set forth in an 

international declaration and be vindicated by national governments 

and international organizations. The United Nations Charter has for 

one of its purposes the "promoting and encouraging of respect for 

human rights." A Commission on Human Rights has been created. 

The task is now 1) getting the clearest possible definition of the 

inalienable rights; 2) having these recognized and guaranteed by the 

states; 3) establishing effective international control for the enforce-

ment of these rights. 

There are no such things as "Catholic" rights, or "Christian" 

justice. The whole end and purpose of Catholic teaching and thinking 

in this sphere is to determine the natural rights and duties of all men, 

be they Christian or Jewish or Moslem or pagan, white or black, or 

anything else, just because they are men and then to defend them. 

If they are true to their principles, Catholics will cooperate with all 

men of good will. 

Questions 

What historical development after the first World War caused 

Catholic moralists and sociologists to emphasize the dignity of the 

human personality? 

55 



Why is the defense of human rights the most urgent of social 

causes ? 

What did Christian opponents of State absolutism mean by "the 

human person"? 

What was the basic reason why the brutalities of totalitarianism 

shocked all those who shared the Christian tradition? 

What was undoubtedly the dominant intention of many gallant 

soldiers who died in combat? 

What was the original moral justification for the British and 

French declaration of war in 1939? 

How did this original intention become confused and vitiated as 

the war progressed? 

What is "democracy"? What is the end of true democracy? 

How did it come about that the Soviet Union was able to call all 

its collaborators "democrats" and all its opponents "fascists"? 

Is this pseudo-democracy the chief enemy and oppressor of those 

human rights and values we set out to vindicate in the war ? 

Are there reasons for doubting the real value of any "compromise" 

text of a bill for human rights subscribed to jointly by both the 

Russians and the Western States? If so, explain why. 

Is it really necessary for all States to agree to such a bill before 

it can have any practical value? 

Is the Communist system of the Soviet Union and its satellites 

the only threats to the essential rights of man? Where do other 

threats arise from? 

What is statolatry? What modern trends in government serve 

to create a mechanism of political omnipotence? 

Does the "Right" also threaten human rights? How? 

Explain how these sources can threaten human rights: the Spanish 

Falange, nationalism, racial hatred, abuses of the capitalistic system, 

exploitation of colonial peoples. 

Discuss the reasons why the rights of individuals should be set 

forth in an international declaration of human rights. 

What was the "Pattern for Peace" adopted in the United States 

by Catholic, Protestant and Jewish leaders on October 7, 1943? 

What does the United Nations Charter contain about human 

rights? 

56 



When was the Commission on Human Rights established ? Why 

is it vital that Catholics take part in the work of this Commission? 

What is the Commission supposed to do ? Give three specific 

objectives to be reached through this body. 

There are no such things as "Catholic" rights or "Christian" 

justice. Explain. 

Should Catholics cooperate with all men of good will towards the 

fuller realization of human rights? Give several reasons. 

Lesson II 

It is difficult to analyze all the various human rights which have 

been systematically drawn up by experts in one country and another. 

Some, however, deserve special emphasis, particularly because they 

are not mentioned frequently enough; if at all. These are three: 

the Family, Religious Education and the Right of corporations to 

hold property. 

It is not true that there is nothing between the citizen and the 

State. On the contrary there is an intervening loyalty: the Family. 

The Christian tradition makes the family, not the individual, the 

formative unit, the pillar of human society, and parents have definite 

rights over and duties toward their children. Some statements of 

human rights do not even mention the family or parents. But the 

Holy Father has emphasized in his addresses the role of the home 

in the building of a true peace. The outraging of family life and the 

home is one of the calamities that has befallen Europe. W e think of 

conscription for labor, and mass deportations by the Nazis with the 

pitiful legacy of "displaced persons," the massive involuntary transfer 

of whole populations by the Russians from Eastern Europe. These 

have constituted the greatest single onslaught upon the institution 

of the Family which has occurred in European history. Hundreds of 

thousands of German fathers, husbands and sons are still cruelly sepa-

rated from their families in Russia, and even England and France. 

In the free countries, too, the governments have failed to make it 

possible for newly-wed couples to have homes of their own. Divorce 

suits have been on the rise. For those who really desire to protect 

human rights in their full sense, the promotion and protection of 

57 



family life ought to be the primary object of a draft for human rights. 

For most of the other rights are aimed to maintain the family. The 

Irish Constitution provides a good model. 

Religious education is bound up with the rights of parents. 

Schools act in loco parentis and by no other title. What on earth 

can be meant by "Everyone has the right to education" ? Does it make 

no difference what kind of education they receive? 

The Church has a mission to teach. In each country she needs 

the freedom and the material means to discharge this duty. Where 

it is not possible to achieve legal recognition of this right then parents 

must fall back upon the natural law and claim the right for schools 

in which teaching conforms to religious conviction. A human rights 

convention stipulating that all parents have the right to send their 

children to schools which conform to their religious convictions would 

be a safeguard for this important area of human values. 

Freedom of worship means nothing unless it includes the right to 

build and possess places of worship. It also includes the right of a reli-

gious organization to exist and to have all the juridical rights attached . 

to a corporate body. Sad experience has taught that anti-Christian 

governments may abolish freedom of religion by the simple process of 

confiscation or other means of making it impossible for Christian 

education to continue. It is disturbing to find no reference to this right 

in any of the drafts of international bills of rights now in circulation. 

Questions 

Name some of the draft proposals for a bill of human rights that 

have been prepared. 

Should the right to freedom of exprçgsion be permitted to those 

who, like the Communists, use that freedom to suppress freedom ? 

What three significant omissions occur in the current draft bills 

of human rights? 

What mistaken theory causes these draft bills to overlook the role 

of the family in human rights? 

In Christian tradition what is the basic unit of civil society? 

What has the Pope said recently about family rights? 

Give the reasons for this proposition : "The defense of the dignity 

58 



and rights of the human person is bound up with the defense of the 

family!" 

Give instances in which the family and the home have been out-

raged during and since the war. 

Why are many of the other human rights really directed to safe-

guarding the rights of the family? Give instances. 

What provisions of the Constitution of Eire may serve as a model 

for safeguarding the rights of the family? 

Why are the rights of the parent inextricably bound up with 

education ? 

Explain the meaning of this statement: "It would be infinitely 

better for them if they had no 'education' at all." 

In what two ways can the Church obtain and guarantee the free-

dom and material means to carry on its work of teaching? 

What specifically has been done in the United Kingdom and in the 

occupied sections of Germany? 

Can there be real religious freedom and protection of family rights 

where the parents and the Church are not allowed the right to possess 

property for purposes of worship and religious education? 

What method of veiled religious persecution was employed in the 

Lois laics in France, in the Soviet Constitution, in the Russian-

occupied zones of Europe? 

Why should parents and religious leaders be especially desirous to 

see this right laid down explicitly: "All institutions, organizations 

and associations existing for purposes not inconsistent with the Bill of 

Rights as a whole, have the right in their corporate capacities to erect, 

acquire and possess buildings and to own land, funds and other prop-

erty necessary or convenient for the maintenance and development of 

their corporate life and activities"? 

Further, how has experience shown the necessity for religion and 

parental rights to be protected by guarantees against requisitioning or 

sequestering of such property by the State, without just compensation? 

Lesson i n 

There are other rights accepted by all reformers genuinely in 

revolt against the tyranny of the State. These include: freedom of 

59 



opinion, worship and speech; freedom from arbitrary arrest; the right 

to a fair trial, equality of civil rights, etc. But before these can become 

truly effective they would have to be phrased more precisely. 

This raises the question whether any short minimum statement of 

rights is likely to be of the slightest use. The easier it is for the 

delegates of many countries to accept it, the more likely they are to 

sign it with tongue in cheek. For this proposal is an attempt to reverse 

the powerful trend to the all-embracing government control. It pro-

poses to clip the wings of sovereignty. It should be expected that 

governments will try to resist or evade its provisions. 

In the realm of priorities we have concentrated on four institu-

tions : The Church, the Home, the Christian School and a really fair 

electoral law. These are more important to the human person's 

development than old age pensions, social insurance and education 

about nothing in particular. 

The right of human beings to travel and trade peacefully and 

settle in any part of the world has been constant and accepted in the 

tradition of the Law of Nations. Circumstances may work to restrict 

this at times. But nothing excuses modern attempts to annihilate it. 

Francis de Vittoria in the sixteenth century explained the old 

tradition of migration and "to set forth and travel wheresoever he 

would." The Right of Asylum arises from the natural obligation, 

enforced by Christian charity to give shelter to the distressed. Not 

only political refugees but those forced to seek a better living in other 

lands are among those to whom the right of migration applies. The 

present Pope bases the case for such migration upon the natural right 

of the family to "vital space."' 

The whole of this Christian and liberal tradition has been frus-

trated by the pretensions of the modern State. The United States, 

Canada, some Latin American countries, Australia and South Africa 

may be mentioned in this connection. The rise of Fascism in Italy 

can be traced as a partial effect of the strangling of emigration from 

that country. 

The State now arrogates to itself the right, not only to take 

reasonable precautions with regard to people leaving or entering its 

territory, but to decide absolutely whether any human being may 

60 



move about or not. It finds its most extreme form in the separation 

from the outside world suffered by the people of the Soviet Union. 

This policy of the USSR prevents the true and friendly understanding 

among all peoples. It also finds expression in the treatment or herding 

of displaced persons in camps from which they cannot move in either 

direction: because they are fugitives from one direction and unwel-

come in the other. 

One of the most important of human rights, therefore, is the right 

to travel and migrate freely for peaceful purposes, subject only to the 

reasonable requirements of public order and economic welfare. 

The preserving of rights already acquired is another task in the 

systematic protection of human rights. Past struggles and victories 

have already established a fair measure of protection for many human 

rights. The proclamation of a general declaration of human rights 

could be used as a pretext for ignoring or failing to renew many precise 

and useful provisions which existed in the pre-war and pre-Nazi 

constitutions and laws. 

Specific examples of what we mean can be given. W e want to 

extend the reach of human rights beyond where they exist today. 

Certainly at least not to throw away what exists in the meantime. 

Questions 

What are some other human rights of importance ? 

Is it important to have precise meanings of these various human 

rights ? Give instances. 

Do yQU think the Atlantic Charter was evaded because each coun-

try that signed it was able to interpret it in its own way? 

Is it likely that governments really welcome a restriction on their 

powers through declarations of human rights? 

What four institutions are more important than old age pensions, 

and social insurance? 

Is there a right of migration ? 

What did St. Augustine say about the right of migration ? 

What exceptional circumstances may justify temporary restric-

tions on this right? 

What was the opinion of Vittoria on the right of migration ? 

61 



What did Vittoria say about the way to treat visitors and 
foreigners ? 

What is the right of Asylum ? What Christian basis does it possess ? 

What did Pope Pius XII say about the right of families to migrate 

and find new homes in other countries? 

Has this right of migration been frustrated in recent times? Give 

same instances. 

What extreme form of frustration of this right is found in 

the USSR? 

Discuss the plight of "displaced persons" in connection with the 

right to migrate. 

Discuss this proposition : "One of the most important of human 

rights which need to be reasserted and defended, is the right to travel 

and migrate freely for peaceful purposes, subject only to the reasonable 

requirements of public order and economic welfare." 

Can human laws ever contravene natural law? Can they define 

and make explicit natural law? 

It is true that the world is only now beginning to achieve the 

realization of human rights? 

What is meant by "rights already acquired"? Give instances. 

What article of the U. S. Constitution preserved the rights already 

acquired by the people prior to the Constitution? 

What would be a practical procedure for preserving these acquired 

rights in the proposed bill of human rights? 

Lesson IV 

W e propose that the practical object of the Human Rights Com-

mission of the United Nations should be to produce an agreement 

open to signature by those States willing to undertake its obligations. 

The practical experience of the International Labor Organization 

offers an example of this method. 

The method of the ILO is to first discuss the precise terms and 

intent of the agreement; then to require the member States to bring 

these conventions before their legislatures for ratification. Why should 

not other and more universal rights of individuals, families and asso-

ciations receive the protection of positive law in the same way? The 

62 



terms of reference according to which the Human Rights Commission 

is supposed to work appears to suggest that this method will be in 

fact employed. This is a method of providing juridical rather than 

merely political control. The laws of the land stand behind human 

rights thus established. 

This same method can be used in creating a check by the United 

Nations upon the implementation by various States of the Bill of 

Rights. It consists in providing juridical rather than merely political 

guarantees. The system established under the old Minorities Treaties 

was subject to arbitrariness. The Court of Justice alone has a detached 

legal character. It is possible that the judges will succeed in judging 

cases on their merits. 

How should such a procedure work? It is difficult to imagine that 

a government against which a group of its own citizens are making 

complaints will take the initiative in presenting this case. And before 

the law "only States (not persons) may be parties in cases before 

the Court." On the other hand, is another country expected to take 

the odium of taking up the defense of the aggrieved groups? It is 

not conducive to civil peace and unity for a group or section of the 

nation to be obliged to look to a foreign power as its advocate. 

A possible procedure might briefly be this: that persons, associa-

tions and organizations, alleging their failure to obtain satisfaction 

from the national courts in respect of implementing the provisions of 

the agreement, should have the right to petition the United Nations; 

that the Secretary General of the United Nations should request the 

Court to give an advisory opinion on the complaint. 

All this may seem legalistic, but it is of little value to speak of 

the United Nations "promoting and encouraging respect for human 

rights and fundamental freedoms" without any clear idea how it could 

be done within the framework of existing institutions. At the same 

time we must face the fact that nothing at all can be accomplished 

without the education of public opinion and the pressure inspired by 

the right principles. If some governments do not see their way to 

sign such international agreements there is nothing to prevent the rest 

from not subscribing to them. 

The defense of human rights of men, women and children and the 

63 



promotion of their spiritual and material well-being is the very end 

and purpose of all politics, nationaland international. The preven-

tion Of war itself is in the last analysis a means to that end. 

Questions 

What should be the practical object of the Human Rights Com-

mission of the United Nations? 

What does the experience of the International Labor Organiza-

tion teach us in this connection? 
What words of the Pope apply especially to the juridical and not 

merely political protection of the rights of peoples? 
Do you think that the present powers of the Human Rights Com-

mission include the possibility of this method? Quote the pertinent 

sections of the terms of reference. 
What does the former Minorities Treaties teach us about the 

international supervision of human rights? 

Give reasons why the International Court of Justice is best quali-

fied to be the Court of Appeal for complaints against violations of 

human rights. 

How is any alleged breach of the proposed Convention on Human 

Rights to be brought before the International Court? 

What special problems arise at this stage? 
What procedure might prove satisfactory and feasible in order to 

get at the facts of a complaint? 
Discuss this proposition of the author: "Nothing can be achieved 

without the education of public opinion and the healthy pressure upon 

governments of bodies of opinion inspired by the right principles; and 

that is only possible where public opinion can, in fact, be instructed 

and mobilized in conditions of relative freedom." 

Is it necessary to wait until all governments are equally ready 

to subscribe to the principles of human rights before any international 

agreement can be put in force? If not, why not? 

"The defense and implementing of the fundamental rights of men, 

women and children, and the promotion of their spiritual and material 

well-being is the very end and purpose of all politics, international 

and national." Discuss in the light of the previous chapters. 

64 



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