The Law of Peace

This course introduces students to the study of peace as a foundational pillar of the law. Drawing from Hans Kelsen’s insight that securing world peace is humanity’s most vital task in his seminal book Peace Through Law (1944), this course takes up the importance of peace for the practice and study of law today. It situates the study of peace through a globally informed lens as a central to the study of law. Students will examine how law plays a complex and conflicting role in sanctioning violence and promoting peace among peoples and nations. For example, law has been used to legitimize government suppression of peace movements on the basis that they threaten national security. Governments have waged wars against certain nations and peoples on the purported legal justification of self-defense. In these instances, peace advocacy is framed as destabilizing, revealing how law can serve as a tool against peace. This course traces these modern concerns within the evolution of the concept of peace within law, which has evolved from a narrow understanding as the absence of war to broader notions of positive peace, encompassing justice, equity, and humanitarian conditions. Students will engage with legal history, peace studies and interdisciplinary perspectives, addressing a gap in legal education and legal scholarship in which peace remains undertheorized and marginalized, despite its central importance to peoples and nations law seeks to serve. The course undertakes the study of peace and its importance in the theory and practice of law in three parts. Part I examines the historical and theoretical origins of the concept of peace in law in ancient Egyptian, Greek, Persian and Roman law and philosophy. Part II considers how modern legal systems and practices advance and constrain peace through treaties, jurisprudence, norm development and peace movements.  Part III engages in relevant scholarly discourse and normative critiques about what the relationship between peace and law should be and which peoples and nations benefit or are harmed. Students will develop a historically informed and conceptually rich research paper on the role and limitations of law in promoting positive peace among peoples and nations. Students will workshop drafts and engage in peer-feedback to develop their depth and expertise as a scholar and writer. This paper satisfies the UCLA Law School SAW Requirement.