Politics & Power Quote by Belva Lockwood

The line imagines that war is not an inevitable expression of human nature but a failure of institutions. Belva Lockwood links peace to legitimacy: if states could trust a truly fair, impartial tribunal, they would choose judgment over force. War, in this view, is what nations resort to when they doubt that their grievances will be heard, that right will prevail over might, or that a binding remedy will be enforced.

Lockwood spoke from the vantage point of a pioneering lawyer and suffragist who fought for equal standing under law. The first woman to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court and a two-time presidential candidate, she carried her faith in legal equality into international affairs. Her era saw the rise of arbitration and the founding of the Hague institutions; reformers like her believed that codified rules, neutral judges, and predictable procedures could tame state rivalry. The underlying moral is Kantian: a community of law makes violence obsolete by offering a credible path to redress.

The condition is demanding. Fairness is not only about procedures but about power. For a world court to displace war, great and small states alike must appear equal before it, consent to its jurisdiction, and accept the enforcement of adverse rulings. Where dominance skews outcomes or enforcement is selective, trust collapses and the resort to arms returns. Realists might call her faith utopian, pointing to security dilemmas, nationalism, and the veto politics that still haunt global governance.

Yet her intuition has proved partly right. International courts have peacefully settled maritime boundaries and territorial disputes from the Bakassi Peninsula to the Peru-Chile maritime case, saving lives and wealth. Imperfect as it is, the legal order has often substituted paper for blood. Lockwood’s deeper claim is that justice is not a luxury adjunct to peace; it is its precondition. Build institutions that treat states fairly, and the appetite for war withers.