The emergence and development of International Law is perhaps the crowning achievement of the modern era. And yet there remain many intractable problems that threaten our environment, our human rights and our global economy. Despite the many remarkable achievements in international public law, much remains to be done. In Mongolia we witness the tragic erosion of human security in the form of environmental degradation, negligence in upholding basic human rights and criminal financial practices emanating from forces of greed that act with relative impunity. We believe that International Law remains the preferred method of addressing clear violations and that the institutions of international law need to be developed sufficiently so as to acquire the capacity to deter ongoing and future abuses.

Perhaps the the greatest obstacle to the development of international law is the lack of public awareness. Many people regard international law as something abstract, remote, theoretical and ungrounded in general practice. This perception undermines the potential of international public law. A world without law can descend into chaos–either as a result of massive social upheaval or through the unbridled practices of corporate greed or a combination of both. The international legal movement is powerless without the support and engagement of the people. And once the people understand that they themselves are the custodians, beneficiaries and agents of international law, the barriers to a sustainable future will be defeated.

How do we build universal cooperation with the concepts inherent in peremptory customary law? We build institutions of law that engage on the local level. We tap into the highest aspirations and values that animate human activity. We engage on the level of belief and tradition. We reach deep into common sources of wisdom and knowledge. Our program for the seminar upcoming in October represents a bold step in this direction.

Partnering with the International Centre of the Roerichs, the Roerich Society of Mongolia, and the National Legal Institute of Mongolia, we will present a program that combines a cultural appraisal of indigenous environmentalism (specifically the forms of nomadic environmentalism indigenous to Mongolia) with an overview of current trends in mainstream environmental law. Certainly, we are seeing a convergence of environmental legal concepts with concepts long held and honored by indigenous population and which are verified by modern science. We consider this convergence highly propitious.

Beginning in the 1970s, indigenous populations have coalesced into a unified global voice. This voice of harmony, reconciliation and respect for Mother Earth and Father Sky is increasingly echoed in the critiques and expressed longings of the non-indigenous majority. This is both a sensible and a visionary development. While many in the dominant culture are perhaps uncomfortable with religious content or spiritual sources in law, most thinking persons are eager to acknowledge the life-affirming contribution of our indigenous siblings to the urgent discourse surrounding issues of environmental law. We sense intuitively that the indigenous represent ourselves and our most fundamental human interests and that it is highly prudent to study and incorporate the indigenous perspective in matters of existential imperative. To acknowledge the indigenous voice is to close the circle of the human family and to begin in earnest a reformative process that may, ultimately, ensure that the human being will not prove to be its own worst enemy.

Overseeing the conceptual elaboration of this synthesis of law and culture will be Dr. Shagdarjen Bira who is the president of the Mongolian Roerich Society, Academician of the Mongolian Scientific Academy and the preeminent keeper of the flame of Mongolian spiritual scholarship; and Prof. Dinah Shelton, whose service to the movement of environmental and human rights law evidences both personal valor and profound intellectual contribution.

While we intend and expect the seeds of this seminar to sprout and proliferate in the hearts of all people globally, we are mindful that local actions and achievements are urgently needed. The perils facing Mongolian nomadism are overmatching the current capacity to fight the good fight. Rivers are being destroyed, birth defects are on the increase and much of the wealth of the nation is being expatriated. Our seminar will address the need for immediate direct action. We expect participation from environmental watchdog organizations and expect to consolidate a broadened legal response to the crises facing Mongolia. In many ways, Mongolia is a microcosm of the world. We as a planet are facing the same situation. Our ability to develop the rule of law on a local level will give us the experience to take the fight to the global level. Mere abstract concepts are largely useless. To the extent that we are able to develop the rule of law in Mongolia, we will prove that the time for universal human security has come. We believe that the powerful concepts of indigenous environmentalism will ignite the imagination and will of the planet. Once all people feel that the Law is “Their Law”, we will produce the change and the direction that is so desperately needed.

Mongolia is, in many ways, at the center of the world: between East and West, a democratic indigenous nation with a proud history of law and civilization, in the cross-hairs of the emerging resource boom in Central Asia (which many regard as the most important region in the world economically), its independent spirit never dimmed by the proximity of powerful neighbors. Mongolia stands to inherit the the position of capital of international law from the Hague. This shift is, in my view, unavoidable. And this is a shift that is full of promise for all people everywhere. Our seminar will be a celebration of the emergence of a “true world order” based on the rule of law and on evolutionary principles.

The long afternoons in the fall in central California seemed to last forever. From the orchards a redolence of decaying fruit, the flotsam of summer, the sunlight evincing a peculiar and ineluctable harvest melange of earthy odors. The Indian summers brought a richness and delicacy to these scents and before sunset the slight cooling allowed one to drink appreciatively of the sun’s darkening, winey reds. I recall with wistful pleasure those late afternoons outside the small bungalow on that non-descript small town street, the bungalow that served as the office for California Rural Legal Assistance (CRLA).

After graduating from Boalt in 1969 and passing the bar exam, my father took a job as directing attorney of the Marysville outpost of CRLA. As a child of seven, I could not have helped noticing the profound differences between the seething vanguard that proliferated in Berkeley and the sleepy, staid and parochial setting that Marysville offered. It felt at first like a strange parallel reality. And yet, while the locale had a decidedly sleep feel, our experiences there proved far from dull. And today, my mind can easily conjure a myriad impressions all competing to suggest and emphasize all that was vital, hopeful and even valorous.

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Justice is the great conjurer. But rather than conjure illusions or facile gain, it conjurers community, selfhood, traditions and future.

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Usually, my mother, little sister and I would wait outside for my father to finish work. My sister and I would play on the sidewalk, my mother sitting in the car reading. But often I had occasion to spend time with my father inside, in the office, the inner sanctum of Justice. I have a vivid memory of sitting at a heavy wooden table and drawing a picture of an enormous Godzilla-type creature. The creature was advancing on an unseen enemy with claws extended. It was detailed and multi-colored. I labeled this dragon “CRLA”. (I believe my father still has this drawing somewhere. I should like to dig it up just now.)

Although immersed in my drawing, I looked up from time to time. It was impossible not be interested in the people who came into my father’s office seeking justice. On this particular day, there was an indigenous couple. They sat in front of my father’s desk and shared the details of their situation which I understood were painful and difficult. Their soft voices betrayed little emotion. But the substance was filled with rage and desperation. I watched as my father listened. He was using a part of himself that I had never seen. He was very attentively weighing their circumstances against known remedies and mentally improvising legal strategy. With one ear, he heard these desperate people. With the other ear, he listened to the Law. It seemed he listened as conduit, coupling human being and sky. I understood in that moment the meaning of “practice”. In “practice” we connect. We connect with one another and in relation to eternal principles. (As environmental law emerged, I learned that we also reconnect with the Earth.)

My father worked on big cases while working at the Marysville office. Class-action farm-worker lawsuits. He worked with civil rights leader Cesar Chavez. I have many memories of fields and festivities, of banners, music, megaphoned voices, of la huelga. We had wonderful gatherings in the big, old farm house we rented that rose up wearily from the sea of orchards. And as a child I was infinitely fascinated by the lawyer-comrades who came to eat and drink, propound and engage. Sometimes, my father would sing. Once, I remember a wrestling match between my father and a colleague. It was never boring. I loved that they always wanted to hear what I had to say.

The riches uncovered in that fertile turbulence were of tremendous psychological value. I draw on it today. My dreams of a universal justice system based in Ulanbaatar; my dreams of an international law that reflects all legal traditions; my dreams of a cultural awakening reconciling the human race with the Divine Source–all these dreams derive from these early experiences. I draw on their capital as I plan, look for fuel, strategize, connect with like-minded people in Mongolia, Austria, Japan, Russia and elsewhere. As I have said to my father several times: “The project in Mongolia is just like CRLA, but on a global scale!” He smiles somewhat nervously at this, for he is aware of the teaming challenges to come.

Behind the nervousness, he is a committed warrior.

In the spring of that year (1971), my mother was sitting in the window sill on the second floor (probably listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)when the broad side of the house was struck by a bullet at some distance from the window. She looked curiously at the point of impact then calmly withdrew to the interior of the house. My sister and I were told it was a stray hunting bullet.

I am a great believer in international law. I believe that the world would be a better place if international law were universally embraced and upheld. Moreover, I believe that the principles underlying international law spring from sources that are universal. One may ascribe it to my upbringing or my nature, nevertheless, to me international law is nothing less than a process of revelation, emanating from the divine source. To my mind, international law is a massive, cosmic inspiration. Looking at Hindu, Judaic, Islamic, Confucian, Western or Indigenous sources of law, one is struck by the deep similarities at the philosophical level. It is clear that at bedrock, we are talking about the same things and that we care equally about the fate of our world and about each other. Every legal tradition attests to a communion with the source of all wisdom. The light of justice, though it may pass through glass of varying colors, is traced to a single source.

The resulting image is dazzling, even in its present imperfect form. And yet, it is not final. Nor is it a mere image. It is a living proposition forever illuminated by a living source. International law is a process. A process of discovery and revelation. And I believe it has an objective source, one that is located simultaneously within us and without us. When we tune to it we experience harmony, both within and without. My mentor, Prof. Yutaka Tajima says that “law is a tool to persuade people to resolve disputes.” I see this tool as a kind of tuning mechanism whereby we may, through trial and error, come into closer proximity with the grand harmonic scheme. Justice is a process of attention. It divides this attention between the issue at hand (usually discordant) and the experience of perfect pitch that inheres in each of us. It uses law a way of resolving discord into harmony. And just as the laws of musical harmony are universal and immutable, so too is justice hard-wired into our living matrix. When we tune to it, the harmonies we create generate energies of their own and society flourishes.

Theorists point to striking dichotomies in comparing the different sources of law. This provokes questions: Are human rights more properly a matter of protecting individuals or guaranteeing collective success? Which category of rights is primary: political or socio-economic? Do human rights spring from sacred or secular sources? These questions have stimulated much debate. These debates are the bread and butter of many a legal theorist. But more interesting to me is the overarching theme of justice. Whatever their differences, all judicial traditions attempt to balance the needs of individuals with collective stability. All attempt to balance the priorities of survival with notions of freedom of individual will. And, ultimately, it may not be terribly important whether the spirit of international law is essentially religious or secular positivist. For me, in all honesty, justice is more basic than either. We are standing on very good ground when we affirm and uphold it.

I believe that international law ultimately unites us all. That it will is my dream. What obstructs is simply the failure to avail ourselves of the tools. Currently the prerogatives of power seem to obviate any consideration of justice. Yet, where people have taken up the tools of law in earnest, harmony has inevitably prevailed. And the resonances produced instill hope for all. So we must listen carefully to the music around us for we are, each and collectively, custodians of universal harmony.
My belief that international law is the answer to the existential challenges we face as a planet has urged me to take action. A few years ago, I started doing research and writing for my father, Prof. Philip Jimenez (Santa Clara University School of Law). Researching Japanese-US relations, I was struck by, to paraphrase Napoleon, “the inability of force to organize anything.” That is, hegemony ultimately fails to produce stability. A respectful friendship between the two countries requires the latitude to disagree. Friendships that can endure no balancing are ultimately unstable. US hegemonic force has been unable to to order the region in the way that a respectful partnership might. As a result of these conclusions, we presented a very effective case at Seikei University for reordering US-Japan relations. Success there spurred me on. And Japan became my spiritual-legal-philosophical adoptive country.

Perhaps it was Prof. Tajima’s statement that “the essence of law is unspoken” that freed me to entertain the idea that beneath the disparate forms of jurisprudence, we ultimately come together in tacit understanding. Certainly, the Japanese emphasis on emptiness does allow for the kind of constructive negativism that the heated debates of the West cannot afford. I feel profoundly lucky to have found my legal purpose in Japan.

The more I researched the more I became enticed by the dream of an all-inclusive summary of law that will “universalize” international law and allow its majestic norms to moderate and guide our human family. I was tasked to write a paper to be included in a Festschrift in honor of our dear family friend Prof. Kim Moon Hwan who was stepping down as president of Kookmin University in Seoul. My father gave me great freedom to pursue any course that I saw fit. I suggested writing about what I termed the “justice vaccuum”–a situation wherein justice is a rare commodity existing in a troubled space, producing a malaise consisting of cynicism and hopelessness. I was writing about the international space. I was writing about the stark absence of justice in the lives of so many. I wondered what needed to be done to strengthen the institutions and organs of international law. I wondered what needed to be done to bring the world into alignment with the laudable principles so fervently championed by the human rights movement and by passionate jurists everywhere and at all times. I began to see international law as an Archimedean lever, capable of moving the world. While the paper was deeply flawed, it nevertheless stimulated interest in addressing the problem, which was really my true intention.