Lawyer Sets Up ‘Court,’ Gets Nuclear Arms Ban

Encino attorney Leon Vickman is persistent.

Motivated to campaign against nuclear warfare, Vickman decided to apply his legal talents to the crusade. So he drafted a lawsuit on behalf of all the people of the earth against the 28 nations that have nuclear weapons.

When federal courts pronounced the suit too “political” for consideration, and the International Court of Justice at the Hague appeared to be an unlikely venue because all parties must agree to any hearing there, he created his own court.

He called it the Provisional District World Court, deriving its power from the Federation of Earth, a proposed utopian world government headquartered in Lakewood, Colo.

Appoints Court Figures

Vickman staffed his court with himself as the plaintiffs’ attorney; Seattle labor lawyer Gaither Kodis as defense attorney for the nuclear nations, and three professors of international law as the tribunal--Burns Weston of the University of Iowa; Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois and Alfred Rubin of Tufts University.

And he charged himself just the right amount of filing fees for the suit to cover all their travel expenses and the rental of a Los Angeles hotel room for the court hearing on his suit Jan. 17, 1987.

When colleagues laughed or chided him for spending so much of his billable time on what they considered an exercise in futility, Vickman never gave up.

And now he finally has the ruling he has sought doggedly for more than five years: nuclear weapons are enjoined.

Not Paying Attention

Not that the 28 nations that have them, including the United States, are paying much attention. Despite the professors’ considerable credentials, their ruling banning weapons and their decision that Vickman’s court has jurisdiction over the issue are pure make-believe.

But Vickman has never considered his suit a useless sham. He plans to place the three separate opinions totaling 60 pages in legal journals around the world as another “source” of the very scarce international law on nuclear weapons.

“It will have an impact on the public opinion,” the bankruptcy lawyer claims, “and in international law, that is usually the only way things are enforced.”

“Judge” Boyle, an anti-nuclear advocate, concluded that nuclear weapons are “manifestations of lawlessness and criminality” and granted the full injunction sought, banning everything from designing nuclear weapons to threatening to use them.

Bans Threat or Use

“Judge” Rubin, who has a military background, left open possible limited use of nuclear weapons, but banned threat or use of them “in any way violative of international law, including the international humanitarian rules of war.”

“Judge” Weston, considered a middle-of-the-roader, banned most uses of nuclear weapons but noted that “it would be of course naive to expect that the law alone can rid the world of nuclear weapons and the threat or actuality of nuclear warfare.”

And is the persistent Vickman satisfied with the decision he spent so long getting?

“Though plaintiffs are very pleased with the judgment and three opinions, since, for all practical purposes they outlaw nuclear weapons,” he spoke for the people of the earth, “we may file a notice of appeal limited to the use of ‘clean’ weapons under limited condition, and as to threat of use and stockpiling issues.”