A government should not be allowed to arrest a person without trial. A person should have the right to face and challenge their accusers with evidence and emotional appeal. A person should have the right to appeal the verdict of a trial.

A government should not be allowed to kill a person at all, certainly not without a fair trial. A person who is found guilty of a crime against others' rights should be put in prison, treated humanely, and given the opportunity to find redemption. Repeat offenders should be kept in prison longer. This should be the case whether a person works for a government or not.

This is a basic framework for the relations between a government and an individual. Some might say that these are Western values, and I disagree. I see these values as universal for humanity, and they address problems that are likewise universal to humanity.

I'm working on an approach on how we might cultivate a global justice system that can help us defend such rights, and this little paper is part of that work. What I argue here is that we should complicate sovereignty by shifting it both globally and regionally, while prioritizing individual rights as the core of legitimacy.

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The UN has no sovereignty. Its first principle is to preserve the absolute sovereignty of nation-states. If the nation state has absolute sovereignty, the individual has none. When the state acts as a violent oppressor, the UN can do nothing to stop them, and the individual victims have no way to appeal unless they flee.

Flight, however, does not mean safety. States are increasingly getting caught trying to intimidate and control people who have gone to other countries and agitate for political reforms in their oppressive home countries. These people are also often targeted by people in their states of refuge.

Part of the way states are trying to intimidate and control people who have moved to other countries and made statements against the oppression of their home countries is to threaten their families. They can make good on those threats because the people have no right to a fair trial, etc.

And the UN has no say in this. They can grumble and fill out forms saying that a person should have a trial. They can issue a study showing that such and such state is guilty of acting contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

And then, they can do nothing. The ICJ can even issue a verdict that the leaders of the government are guilty of genocide, and then do nothing.

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If the UN is to be helpful, it needs sovereignty. It needs the sovereignty to enforce law. It needs the sovereignty to arrest heads of state, give them a fair trial, and keep them in prison if they so choose.

This is not to say that the UN should have absolute sovereignty. It should not, and in order to check the sovereignty of the UN, we should cultivate more layers of legal bureaucracy.

We should keep states, with boundaries where they are in general, although there might be a few exceptions, and the UN already gets to decide who gets to call themselves a sovereign state, and that's good enough. I'm not arguing for a stateless global society. The states are useful.

They should have a more robust counterpart in trade unions. And trade unions should have more regional sovereignty as well. We already have the establishment of internaitonal and regional economic pacts, and we should build on these with trade unions.

A regional trade union confederacy of members of ASEAN, for example, could be used to challenge member states and the organization itself, which prioritizes attracting foreign investment by exploiting resources and labor. A Southeast Asian confederacy of trade unions can serve as a way to check the organizations legitimacy while advocating for individual rights within and among the states.

There are also global union organizations, and those can be used as kind of a counter-balance to the UN. If the UN represents the states, we can use a global union confederacy to participate in legislation and to help build up a more robust court system with roots in the regional trade union confederacies. Indeed, I would put the global court system more in the hands of the unions than the states, but the unions should be checked by the states and the UN as well.

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The Iroquois-speaking people who are part of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (https://www.haudenosauneeconfederacy.com) practice multiple layers of sovereignty: personal, clan, nation, and Kaianere'kó:wa (The Great Law of Peace).

The Kaianere'kó:wa is sacred, backed up by wampum and story-telling. It still stands as the law binding the confederacy, and this confederacy has lasted over five centuries and is still going.

Part of how this works is the clan system. The clans cross national boundaries. The clans are associated with animals and accompanying elements. Members of the Turtle clan in one nation are also members of the Turtle clan in another nation.

Clan and nation both have sovereignty. They both make decisions as a group. They do not over-rule each other, and they can be used to challenge each other.

Kaianere'kó:wa provides a legal and moral framework within which these clans and nations interact. The sovereignty of the Kaianere'kó:wa is loose, as more actual authority is in the hands of the clans and nations, and the Kaianere'kó:wa has proven effective even in managing relations with colonial forces, and in helping the people of the Haudenosaunee settle disputes.

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I'm suggesting a similar type of mixed sovereignty on a global scale with protection of individual rights as a first principle. We can maintain the nation-states and expand the structure and function of trade unions across national borders.

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We still will have a problem of enforcement. Somehow, the global court system should be able to issue an arrest warrant, and someone should be able to go in there and arrest heads of state. This is dangerous, but necessary.

The criteria for issuing such a warrant should be scrutinized by more than one institution. This is an advantage to having the unions to check the states, and the states to check the unions.

As for what institution should have the authority to make such an arrest, Interpol kind of has the bureaucratic framework. They have been engaged in scandal, but how much of that is because they were threatening politically connected people is hard to tell. They would have to gain a lot of bureaucratic scale, and would have to challenge white collar crime with the support of the unions to make it workable.

The other institution that comes to mind is the UN Security Council. They would need a new charter, and get rid of the permanent member status and the one vote veto, but they have a more robust bureaucracy and more military infrastructure than Interpol.

Maybe the two institutions can work in tandem with different jurisdictions, and work together in extreme conditions. They have to be seen as legitimate somehow by the people, and they can gain that public support by fighting for justice across borders.

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The virtue of personal sovereignty is universal, and the human rights that protect that freedom ought to be universal, too. When a person is free to speak up against tyranny, foreign or domestic, that person is able to do more good for their country and humanity in general. When a person is refused that right, tyranny and oppression thrive.

This is at the heart of how democracy should be. Freedom of expression makes a government ruled by the will of the people possible. Without the freedom to challenge our governments and our accusers, we lose all other freedoms.

What do you think?

Anyway, thank you for reading. I hope you have a lovely and fulfilling day full of real justice and freedom. I hope you and the people who love you are safe and healthy. Please take good care.

Power to the people

Freedom of the soul