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The McDougal-Lasswell Proposal to Build a World Public Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2017

Gray L. Dorsey
Gray L. Dorsey*
Affiliation:
Jurisprudence and International Law, School of Law, Washington University at St. Louis; International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy
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Extract

The January 1959 issue of this Journal carried the famous proposal by Myres S. McDougal and Harold D. Lasswell to build a world public order based on human dignity that would save the world from nuclear Armageddon and protect democratic values. The authors expressed the belief that the democratic countries were responding ineffectively to Marxist-Leninist expansionism because they appealed to international law rules and principles that were asserted or assumed to be universal but, in fact, did not have universal effectiveness. Two dangers existed, therefore: the universal triumph of totalitarianism or nuclear war between blocs led by the United States and the Soviet Union. The proposed world public order would make it possible to escape this horrendous dilemma.

Type
Agora: Mcdougal-Lasswell Redux
Information
American Journal of International Law , Volume 82 , Issue 1 , January 1988 , pp. 41 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of International Law 1988

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