[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 89 (Tuesday, July 11, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1374-E1375]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     WORLD PEACE THROUGH WORLD LAW

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. CHARLES B. RANGEL

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 11, 2006

  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a truly 
remarkable man, Mr. Louis B. Sohn passionate supporter of the United 
Nations, Mr. Sohn has made a significant mark on both our country and 
the world. On June 7 at his home in Falls Church, Virginia, we lost Mr. 
Sohn to complications of a stroke. He was 92 years old.
  Born March 1, 1914, right at the start of World War I, in Lwow, 
Poland, Louis showed tremendous passion right from the beginning. He 
earned both his undergraduate and law degrees from John Casimir 
University. A mere two weeks before the invasion of Poland during World 
War II, a Harvard law professor who had been impressed by Mr. Sohn's 
treatises, invited him to be a research fellow at Harvard School of 
Law. Soon after his arrival, he met Betty Mayo, who became his wife and 
is now his only survivor.
  Serving as an assistant to Manley O. Hudson, a Harvard Law professor 
and a judge on the Permanent Court of International Justice at the 
Hague, Mr. Sohn traveled to San Francisco for the United Nations 
charter conference. With his help, the International Court of Justice 
was established. Then when Mr. Hudson retired as the Bemis Professor of 
International Law at Harvard, Louis Sohn was awarded the honor.
  Professor Sohn was well known for his book ``World Peace Through 
World Law,'' which he co-authored with Grenville Clark, a prominent 
Wall Street attorney. Their book delved into various proposals to 
transform the U.N. into a world government.
  Throughout his 50 year career in the field of law, which culminated 
at the University of Georgia School of Law, Professor Sohn was a 
champion for disarmament and the creation of a permanent U.N. peace 
force. He hoped that through such a peace force, the U.N. could use 
their military budget alternatively to relieve poverty. Mr. Sohn 
commendably spent his life working hard for a more powerful United 
Nations.
  I enter into the Record an article published in the New York Times on 
June 23, 2006 titled ``Louis B. Sohn, Passionate Supporter of the U.N., 
Dies at 92.'' The article provides a more in depth commentary of 
Professor Sohn's esteemed accomplishments. He is a truly remarkable man 
who has left an everlasting imprint on society. We must keep his legacy 
alive and continue to fight for disarmament and human rights.

                [From the New York Times, June 23, 2006]

      Louis B. Sohn, Passionate Supporter of the U.N., Dies at 92

                           (By Dennis Hevesi)

       Louis B. Sohn, a professor of international law who helped 
     draft parts of the United Nations Charter in 1945 and was a 
     leader in subsequent efforts to turn the United Nations into 
     a true world government, died on June 7 at his home in Falls 
     Church, Va. He was 92.

[[Page E1375]]

       The cause was complications of a stroke, said Paige Otwell, 
     a friend.
       For nearly 50 years, while at the Harvard School of Law and 
     then the University of Georgia School of Law, Professor Sohn 
     served on commissions and organized conferences around the 
     world, championing disarmament, human rights and increased 
     powers for the United Nations.
       He called for the creation of a permanent United Nations 
     peace force. He wanted nations with nuclear arsenals to hand 
     them over to the United Nations and use their military 
     budgets for relieving poverty. He campaigned to have the 1948 
     United Nations Declaration of Human Rights accepted as a 
     legally binding document, rather than a statement of 
     principles. In 1968, the General Assembly adopted that 
     premise.
       Those proposals and others were seized upon by American 
     isolationists to attack the United Nations. Professor Sohn 
     called them ``the minimum requirements for peace, not a 
     utopian scheme for a perfect world community.''
       Louis Bruno Sohn was born on March 1, 1914, in what was 
     then Lwow, now Lviv, then part of Poland but now in Ukraine. 
     He graduated from John Casimir University there and then 
     earned a law degree in 1939.
       Professor Sohn's parents, Isaak and Fredericka Sohn, were 
     doctors. His father, taken to an internment camp after the 
     invasion of Poland, barely survived World War II. His mother 
     died of pneumonia that first winter.
       Two weeks before the invasion, at the invitation of a 
     Harvard law professor who read one of his legal treatises, 
     Professor Sohn had boarded a ship to the United States to 
     become a research fellow. In 1941, he married Betty Mayo, a 
     Radcliffe student; she is his only survivor.
       At Harvard, he became an assistant to Manley O. Hudson, a 
     judge on the Permanent Court of International Justice at the 
     Hague, which was established by the League of Nations but 
     suspended during the war. Judge Hudson was the Bemis 
     Professor of International Law at Harvard. Professor Sohn 
     succeeded to the Bemis chair in 1961 and held it until 1981.
       In the summer of 1945, Judge Hudson and his assistant 
     traveled to San Francisco for the United Nations charter 
     conference. There, they helped draft the statute establishing 
     the International Court of Justice, or World Court, as the 
     successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice.
       In an interview in 1977, Professor Sohn recalled how 
     Harvard had asked him to teach a course on the United Nations 
     after his return from the charter conference, ``because 
     nobody else would teach anything so crazy.''
       In 1958, Professor Sohn was a co-author, with Grenville 
     Clark, of ``World Peace Through World Law'' (Harvard 
     University Press), which examined proposals to transform the 
     United Nations into a world government. The book envisioned a 
     time when the United Nations budget, then $55 million, would 
     surpass $35 billion, with $25 billion set aside to mitigate 
     ``the worst economic disparities between nations.''
       The authors also called for the elimination of all 
     armaments in 12 years and envisioned that the United Nations 
     would then have a monopoly on military force and would 
     maintain a peace force of 400,000 soldiers.
       In 1967, Professor Sohn wrote a report for a committee of 
     international law experts, urging the United Nations to study 
     the threat to individual freedom posed by computers, 
     eavesdropping devices and genetic engineering. The report, 
     submitted to the United Nations as part of the 20th 
     anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 
     said the concept of national data banks ``raises the specter 
     of a government which knows all.''
       ``Arrangements have to be devised,'' it said, ``to control 
     the precious few who run the machines, and on whose wisdom 
     and impartiality the fate of mankind may depend.''
       In 1977, Professor Sohn was a delegate to a United Nations-
     sponsored conference that drafted the Convention on the Law 
     of the Sea, which the General Assembly adopted in 1982.
       In 1981, after 35 years at Harvard, Professor Sohn accepted 
     an invitation from Dean Rusk, who had been secretary of state 
     under President John F. Kennedy, to join him in teaching 
     international law at the University of Georgia.

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