Law School Becomes Advocate for World Peace

Michael Dessent said it might be easier to have that beer and just forget about it. Most of the world is doing just that. Why not us? The times, he said, are terrific sponsors of apathy.

As an attorney--dean of California Western School of Law--he found himself wanting to do more. He agrees with many of the “L.A. Law” television stereotypes of the legal profession. Dessent says there’s “way too much litigation.” But the best of the legal system can make a difference.

It could bring about world peace, he said.

So, Dessent listened intently when Leland (Buzz) Featherman, his friend and legal colleague, offered a plan with world peace as the primary goal. Lawyers from San Diego searching for world peace from a classroom at Cal Western? Exactly. And neither of them thought it preposterous.

Featherman longed for a forum where people could talk about peace without waging war. He thought attorneys, reasonable men such as he and Dessent, could actually do something.

It may sound like a little thing--it may even sound naive, “A ripple on the pond of peace,” as Featherman calls it--but the Peace Through Law Institute is now a reality, based at the California Western School of Law.

It began in May, and yes, founder Featherman said unabashedly, its goals are lofty.

Legal Approach

“The Peace Through Law Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, seeks to substitute a legal approach to conflict resolution in the international arena,” reads its manifesto. “The law provides orderly, systematic procedures for resolving conflict, among them negotiation, compromise, settlement, arbitration and litigation.

“These techniques are ideally suited to seek peaceful solutions to international conflict, including the arms race. Use of existing international law principles, moreover, is essential to the creation of a stable, treaty-based order that will facilitate commerce and peace in all corners of the globe.”

The institute hopes to “sponsor regular conferences to bring together judges, lawyers, law-makers, teachers, students and concerned citizens from all nations to work on issues of peace through law.” It hopes to develop “curricula in peace through law” and spread them to other schools. It hopes to fund scholarships to students from other countries for the purpose of studying peace.

Featherman, 53, who has lived in San Diego 25 years, conceded that the mission of a peace activist often feels hopeless, that those waging peace are sometimes termed “naive.”

“There was a time when people felt they could do absolutely nothing about slavery,” he said. “A few church leaders and a few abolitionists were the only people behind it. Those people were able to change the structure of the country by having slavery abolished.

“I see world peace as a huge puzzle and our group as one tiny piece. But we are a piece.”

Featherman is also involved in a national group called Lawyers’ Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control (LANAC). LANAC periodically offers testimony to Congress and is currently pushing the “narrow version of the ABM treaty, as opposed to the broader version backed by the Reagan administration. We’re opposed to Star Wars (the Strategic Defense Initiative),” Featherman said, “which Reagan, of course, supports.”

Taking Sides

Featherman recently taught a class at Cal Western in which he commanded students to take sides in the arms debate. One side of the class assumed the Soviet position, the other side the American view. One student, a Marine, told Featherman his “eyes had been opened” regarding arms control. He once opposed it; now he favors it.

“That’s the kind of change we’re talking about,” he said. “If that man becomes a high-ranking official in the military, he could make a difference.”

Featherman said the U.S. Institute for Peace, a federally sanctioned organization, receives as its slice of the budget $4 million a year.

“But the total defense budget,” he said, “is close to $300 billion. Our main question is why. Why such a huge disparity?”

Despite the questions and the good intentions, Dessent conceded the frustration of being a small ripple on a giant pond. Having that beer is easier than fighting back, he said, quickly adding, “I would rather err on the side of trying.”

Dessent and Featherman are also aware of the reputation of the legal profession, and of the irony of an adversarial method being used to effect peace.

“I would rather see us dealing as adversaries in the courtroom than in the war room,” Featherman said. “We have an adversarial relationship with the Soviet Union, with Iran. I would rather see us behaving as adversaries across a table than shooting at each other from across a battlefield. If this can work as a substitute for war, we’ll all be better off.”

John Somerville, 81, a lifelong activist for peace now living in El Cajon, said he applauded the Peace Through Law Institute. He knows neither Featherman nor Dessent nor any of the institute’s 15 board members, some of whom in Dessent’s words are conservative Republicans. Somerville said he condoned any search for peace, especially in a city where the military and national defense play a major role.

“Lawyers are so very important because of the existence of international law,” said Somerville, inventor of the word “omnicide” and recent winner of the Gandhi Peace Award, given by the Connecticut group, Promoting Enduring Peace. “Lawyers are vitally important in interpreting international law, in insisting that it be acted upon. International law can be a tremendous tool for world peace, for resolving conflict that can fester into war. The United Nations, for instance, is the primary agent of international law.”

Graduates in Key Positions

Dessent, 44, who has served as dean for a year, called Cal Western one of the first law schools in the nation to be accredited by the American Bar Assn. In six decades, Cal Western has come to specialize in international law, he said, with graduates assuming key positions in diplomatic and governmental arenas around the world. He cited alumnus Tom Nassif, currently the U.S. ambassador to Morocco.

“We have alumni involved in negotiating treaties between governments,” Dessent said. “A number of our alumni are involved in Pacific Rim issues, negotiating oil contracts with the Japanese, the Filipinos, the Australians and the Mexicans. We have 3,000 alumni in 50 states and 11 foreign countries.”

Featherman said the efforts of the Peace Through Law Institute loom much larger when considering that Cal Western graduates, imbued by the institute, could play a direct role in negotiating peace treaties.

In Somerville’s words, no effort in the context of peace is small.

“We need not just lawyers but doctors, businessmen, women’s groups and students to bring pressure to bear,” he said. “Judges and office holders all want to stay in power. Once they get the message that they’ve got to make peace and not war, that’s what they’ll do.

“More and more people are joining the peace movement. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel the pressure mounting--becoming irresistible. People are tired of being lied to. There is no cause for hopelessness. The channels are open, and the channels are working. I applaud the Peace Through Law Institute for realizing that. They’re one group that’s doing something.”