around the world. >> good morning, booklovers. my name is out styles. i am delighted to welcome you to the 11th annual savanna book festival. the book festival is presented by georgia power, david and nancy cintron, the sheehan family foundation and mark and pat. many thanks to jack and mary, our sponsors for this glorious venue, trinity united methodist church. we would also like to extend thanks to our literary members

and individual donors who make the saturday off presentations possible. 90% of our revenue comes from donors just like you. we are very excited to have the savanna book festival available for your phone. look in your program for information on downloading. immediately following the presentation, scott shapiro will be signing festival purchased copies of his book. if you are planning to stay for the next off your presentation we ask that you please move forward so that the issues can count the available seats so we can let in the right amount of people. no flash photography. now is a good time to set your

phone to do not disturb or turn it off. for the question and answer portion please raise your hand and an usher will bring a microphone to you and you need to wait until the microphone gets to you before you ask your question because no one will be able to hear you otherwise. please limit your self to be fair to one question and no long stories please. scott shapiro is with us today courtesy of liz and kent ernest. scott teaches both law and philosophy at yale law school where he directs the center for law and philosophy. here and his bachelors and doctor degrees in philosophy from columbia and jd from yale law school. he was the author of legality and jurisprudence and philosophy of law, one of my favorites.

please give a warm welcome to scott shapiro. [applause] >> hello, everyone. good morning. i have yankee blood. i brought a jacket that is too hot for me. it is snowing in new york. i am enjoying being overheated. our book, the internationalists, is the story of the modern international order, about the people who helped to build it and why despite its imperfections it is crucial that it be defended now more than ever. the central argument of the book is the origins can be

traced to a specific date in history. august 27, 1928, world leaders gathered together in paris. the treaty was signed on that date goes by the name the kellogg brand pack, kellogg for frank kellogg, the american secretary of state and brian, the french foreign minister, has largely been forgotten. i am just curious, show of hands, who has ever heard of the kellogg brand act? that is a lot of people. that is much more, savanna, very educated. most people have never heard about it. actually, most law professors have never heard of it and the people who have heard of it think it is among the most

ridiculous things diplomats have ever tried to do. the idea that you could end war by signing a piece of paper strikes many people as the height of foolishness. to tell you the truth, when my colleague and i taught international law at yale before we wrote the book we also treated it that way, as a laughingstock and obviously a failed experiment in idealism. however, through the course of research on related topic, though at the time we didn't know it was related, the history of economic sanctions, we discovered some didn't expect. far from being ridiculous, outlying war turned out to be transformative. it represented, if you will, a hinge in history where one world order ended and another

began. in short, before 1928, war was the legitimate mechanism of statecraft. it was the way in which states and forced their rights against one another. this is what we found astonishing. before 1928, war was legal but economic sanctions were illegal. after 1928, this switch is that it switches incredibly quickly. war becomes illegitimate, indeed criminal. economic sanctions are now the routine way in which international law is enforced throughout the world. we describe this tectonic shift in world history and ratably through it cast of characters we call the internationalists.

most of these people, in fact, one of the main heroes of the book i will talk about later did not, before the book, have a wikipedia entry, which in the modern world means you don't exist but really taken by her determination, brilliance, vision, doggedness, and to figure out how to take their ideas and turn them into action. at a time when people are thinking about resistance, their story, we found to be inspirational. one of the reasons most people think war -- i turned on my phone just because i realized i

didn't know how long things were going and my sister texted me i am watching you. hi, melissa. okay. yeah. okay. so i the reason why most people think outlying war is ridiculous sort of thing to do is because they don't appreciate the final war used to play before 1928 in an era which we call the old world order. in the old world order, states had the right of war. today, we war -- we think of war is the consummate breakdown of the system. in the old world order, war was the system. if a state had been wronged and made demands of reparation and those demands were ignored, the

state who had been injured had the legal right to use force in order to write that wrong. they have that right not just in cases we recognize of self-defense, invasion, but any kind of legal wrong whatsoever, to collect debtss, recover property, to enforce commercial treaties, any reason you could go to court you could go to war for. this may sound like an absolutely crazy thing to do, barbaric, to go to war to collect debts. but from their perspective in the old world order, it made perfect sense. of somebody owes you money, what do you do? go to a lawyer, sue the person, go to court, if the person doesn't pay up, the sheriff,

the judgment. if you are a state, you are sovereign so you don't recognize any higher authority, you don't have anyone to go to, there is no supreme court of the world, there are no world police. .. they had many other rights which gave the right of more value. the most important right that they have which supported the right of war was the right of conquest. we know the conquest has happened for millennia. what many people don't realize is that congress was a legal right and it was a legal right because of the law needed to give states away of actually writing the wrongs that they went to war in order to write. when the united states went to

war with mexico in 1846 the official legal justification was that mexico owed the united states $2 million. the united states tried for 20 years to get that money back and decided to go to war in 1846, and as compensation, they got compensation for those debts and the name of that compensation is california, utah, nevada, new mexico, part of oklahoma and basically 500,000 square miles of mexican territory. this is not the way, when the united states did this it was not acting as a rogue imperial power. it was acting as what responsible states did. and that is because the old world order give states the right of war and, therefore, the right of conquest.

in addition to the right of conquest states had another right. if they had the right to go to war, if they had the right to threaten to go to war, this is incredibly important because this undergirds the practice that we now call gunboat diplomacy. as many of you know, in the 19th century japan was excluded, excuse me, secluded, and excluded with the exception of the dutch twice a year from trading with japan. the united states and other western powers were very upset. they claim that japan was violating its legal obligation to engage in global commerce, and since matthew perry and his gunboats into tokyo bay, threatening to destroy the port unless the japanese signed a treaty of friendship.

the japanese quickly became friends with the united states and other western countries. these treaties were binding in the old world order and can violate -- in fact, to violate them with a been a cause for war. because war was legal, another consequence followed. immunity to prosecution. if war is legal, waging war cannot be criminal. and that his wife before 1928 no head of state or military leader was ever prosecuted for waging an aggressive war. napoleon, the polling goes war with virtually every state in europe. kills five to 7 million people, and what is his punishment? he gets an island in the mediterranean called alba at

which it is the emperor. of course it is a demotion to go from emperor of france to emperor of alba but hardly the punishment you would give somebody who killed five to 7 million people. at the end of world war i the victors in the treat upper side pledged to indict kaiser wilhelm ii for waging an aggressive war. he flees to the netherlands the netherlands will not give up him on the theory that he did nothing wrong. that is, that it is not legal to prosecute somebody for engaging in illegal activity. finally, because states have the legal right of war, neutral states, that is, states that were not in the war, were under a strict duty of impartiality. that's what lawyers call it, a strict duty of impartiality.

meaning that if they were to favor one side over another,, that would be an act of war. i don't know how many here have seen hamilton or heard the soundtrack to hamilton, the cabinet battle two is all about this duty of neutrality. they are the united states did not want to favor france in its war with great britain on the theory that if it favored one side over another it would be an act of war and would draw the united states into a war with the european powers, which it did not want to get drawn into. the thing is i normally give this talk with a powerpoint. and it has pictures and diagrams and cool animation. it is very helpful to see how

the old world order changes, but they said if you want to be on tv you couldn't have the powerpoint. and so i was thinking, don't want to give a good talk and not be on tv? [laughing] or a a lousy talk and be on tv? so -- [laughing] hi, mom. [laughing] anyway, what you would've seen,, what you would have seen is a slide that has in the center it says right of war, and there would have been for circles emanating from it. when what it said right of conquest. the other one would said right of diplomacy, and below you would've seen immunity to prosecution for war. and finally duties of impartiality. the duties of impartiality are really important because that was what prevented new tools

from opposing sanctions on illiterates. things that we do every day now were violations of the laws of war. so that's what you would have seen. okay. now i've been describing this very abstracted but the book is called "the internationalists" and is really about people. one of the most important people in the book, the guy who does not have his own, who did not have his own wikipedia entry is this man named samuel levenson, a jewish bankruptcy attorney from chicago. and he was the son of german immigrants. he became a successful lawyer doing corporation reorganization for sears, with railroad railroad companies, steel companies. billy never thought about

international relations at all until world war i happened in the stock market shut down for the first time, for the third time in its history. he also went to fighting aids science, eddie started, he started thinking about the legality of war, thinking how foolish this is that we allow states to resolve the conflicts are essentially getting them to kill each other. i don't know how many lawyers are out there but i think it's really significant that samuel levenson was a bankruptcy attorney. because bankruptcy attorneys hate litigators. litigators fight it out. they make a bad situation worse was the bankruptcy attorney tries to make a bad situation better here let's all get in the room, work it out. let's not fight to the death. and also he's a bankruptcy attorney. he's not an international lawyer so he doesn't really appreciate

the fact that this is the way the world has always been. he knows it but it's not like baked into his dna. and so he imagines a different world. and it turns out that through his wife he was close friends with the great american philosopher john dewey. and do we help them develop his thoughts on the outlaw of work on how to make law illegal, and he, levinson, starts to make contacts with important politicians and in particular the chair of the foreign relations committee. it's a long story from 1917 to 1928 which we tell in the book, and i won't go into it now, but through incredible dogged

determination, levinson was able to bootstrap a global social organization which pays off on august 27, 1928, when the kind of 15 most powerful nations, united states, germany, italy, france, japan, china, they need in paris to outlaw war. and right after that within the year virtually every state in the world signed onto it renouncing war. and it was at the time the most subscribed to treaty in history. so it was really an amazing achievement. he didn't work alone. he worked with other characters that we describe in the book, and he got the will to do something momentous. it was so momentous that it was

dangerous. why? what that pack did, remember just spent the first 12 minutes or so of this talk describing how the world operator according to the rules that presupposed the legality of war. all of a sudden, like they had taken out the linchpin of that system. they taken out to center. they have had now said that ale rules that states, that you followed, which is been on the right of war, you no longer have that right. and this caused an enormous problem. the first problem that arises, but falls the successor to frank kellogg of the kellogg grandma pact, the secretary of state henry stimson.

september 1931 japan invades manchuria. and eventually congress manchuria. manchuria is enormous. it's one point 1.5 million sque kilometers. it's like this enormous piece of the earth. japan had just signed the kellogg briand pact three years earlier. why they did that is a whole other story which we talk about in the book. it's a really interesting story like a thought they were allowed to do that. but they did it. and that caused an enormous problem for the world, which was what do we do about this? like how do we enforce the prohibition against war? we just renounced war. it would be absurd to use war to enforce the prohibition on war. it's like a homer simpson moment where they go like d'oh. they throughout the one tool they had and then they had to

think, well, what tools do we have in order to discipline states who do go to war and violate their commitments? henry stimson went to yale college and it just so happens he was a classmate of salmon levinson. and levinson had wrote, had written an article in 1929 which he sent to stimson. and in that article which was entitled the sanctions of peace, he proposed that now that war was illegal, state should no longer have the right of conquest. if whole idea of conquest was to further the states right of war, it states that don't have the right of work that should no longer have the right of conquest. of course people would engage in conquest, levinson recognized, but what other state should not do is recognize that conquest. they should not trade with them. they should not accorded any

sovereign rights to the conqueror, as levinson said, somebody might take a city but that city would no longer be his. stimson takes up this idea and then writes the famous stimson note which became the famous stimson doctrine. and in the stimson doctrine he said he was now the policy of the united states that they would no longer recognize conquest in fact, they would no longer recognize treaties that were coerced. now, and then the league of nations, all the members of the league of nations also adopted this. this is an unbelievable revolution in the way the world works. within four years that signing this piece of paper, virtually the entire world renounces what hitherto had been one of the most ancient rights of

sovereignty. that is, conquest. suggest you read you the stimson note. it says, a u.s. does not intend to recognize any situation, treaty or agreement which may be brought about by means contrary to the covenants and obligations of the pact of paris, of august 27, 1920. that pact of paris is the kellogg-briand pact. and league of nations agreed that signing the pact of paris means states cannot conquer one another. so if you ever wonder why, like nobody recognizes russia's invasion of crimea, is of this, is this. it begins in 1932 right after 1928. and the reason that is given is because of the outlaw of war. this not only gets rid of the right of conquest but also the right of diplomacy. because if you can't go to war,

you can't threaten to go to war and get the agreement you want. next order of business is this neutrality think that i talked about, that is the duties of impartiality. in the run-up to world war ii and when world war ii begins the for the united states is in the war, -- before. a big problem faces the united states which is how do we aid great britain and not germany and not commit an act of war? because remember, too up one belligerent over another was illegal, and that would be creating, that would be committing an act of war. many isolationists in the united states did not want america drawn into the war. it was then in the beginning of 1941, six months before pearl harbor, at the united states adopted the position that the pact of paris and that

kellogg-briand pact change the strict duties of neutrality. meaning that now because states don't have the right of war, neutral states are not anything with the rights by siding with their opponents over them. because they are not trampling on the right of or because they don't have the right of four. no one has the right or of war anymore except in cases of self-defense. now, this is incredible, i think, because first of all it's the beginning of this practice of economic sanctions that we just take for granted and it happens now because of the kellogg-briand pact. i did also happened six months before pearl harbor. the reason that the japanese attacked the united states and pearl harbor was because we impose economic sanctions on them. which by the old rules would have been a reason to attack the united states. now, the united states only

changed its mind about what neutral states were about to do six months before the attack. so really what you have here, what world war ii becomes is a clash over world orders. it's a war over war. now, after the allies win the war the question becomes what do we do about it? what do we do with the nazis and imperial japan who waged this aggressive war? can we prosecute them? now, the claim became, and it's a long story which we tell in the book, nuremberg is the trial in which the main charge is the charge of violating the kellogg-briand pact. we think of nuremberg as the trial in which, or trials, in

which the nazi leaders were convicted, prosecuted and then convicted of perpetrating the holocaust. that was not the reason why these trials were put, were, i don't want to say staged, but were established, okay? they were established to try the nazis for waging aggressive war, and the american officials were able to shoehorn charges of the holocaust into nuremberg simply by saying that the holocaust was related to aggressive war. so the crimes against humanity, the real legal, the real legal reason for that is the kellogg-briand pact. if you google it you'll see it's in the indictment. it's talked about extensively in the trial transcripts.

what we see, and if i had the power point, the animation have been -- [laughing] would have blown you away. [laughing] so you're just going to have to believe me on this one. [laughing] so remember i had said that there was this slide we have in the middle the right of four and then conquest, gunboat diplomacy, immunity, prosecution and new economic sanctions, and then the animation would have gone -- you would've seen this new slide which we call the new world order of what you have a prohibition on war, no conquest, no gunboat diplomacy, prime of aggression and then finally the possibility of economic sanctions. what you do is you see an entire international system flipped on its ear in a very, very short

time. because of this piece of paper signed in 1928. again, , it doesn't happen all t once. i really don't know what -- when they sign in 1928 day don't know what they are doing. it's like, to give the obamacare analogy, what if congress had repealed obamacare but not replaced it, right? there would have been chaos and it would have taken a long time to put this thing together. this is not just the healthcare system of the united states. this is the international system involving all the states of the world. this is a really complex, messy process but which is precipitated on that day august 27, 1928. the last part of the book that we map out the new world order, i'm going to talk about it very briefly, but one of the things we wanted to do is we want to

see whether the change in the rules matters. a con the ground. and so there's a lot of statistical evidence in the book, a lot of quantitative evidence. what we did was we went through all the territorial acquisitions data from the data site which is the largest and most comprehensive data set involving war. and we tracked basically the practice of conquest from 1816- 2014. and this is what we found. much too, i mean, luckily, it turns out this way but we're kind of shocked at the magnitude of the effect both in terms of size, frequency and size. so it turns out that from 1816 to 1928, 1816 pitches with the data starts so that's why we

started there, from 1816 to 1928 the average state could expect to suffer a conquest once in 40 years. after 19, afterwards a state could expect, the average state could expect to suffer a conquest once or twice in 1000 your spirit to put that in human terms that means italy before 1928, the odds that you live in the state that would be conquered would be once in your lifetime. and now it's once or twice a millennium it so an enormous change in terms of the frequency. but in terms of the extent which was striking is the average before 1928 was per year amount of territory conquered is roughly 11 crimea spirit like if you take crimea and you multiply it by 11, you get the average

amount conquered per year. now, after 1945 you get roughly one crimea every four years. you come from 11 to one every four years, which, in the last crimea was crimea. this is, that's why crimea matters a great deal. because if you will, it's the exception that proves the rule. it's such a rarity now. basically conquests has fallen off in terms of extent 96%, and it needs to stay that way. it needs to stay that way, and the way in which it stays that way is that the acquisition by russian of crimea cannot be recognized. the sanctions cannot be dropped.

it is horrible for people of crimea, but it is really important for the health of the international system. because states cannot be conquered we see a proliferation of state pics after 1945 you have about 60 states. now there's roughly 193 193 st, and the reason is is that states can be small and weak. south sudan broke away from sudan, even though it makes it more vulnerable in one sense, but not vulnerable in another way. it doesn't really have to worry about being conquered and have its oil deposits taken because nobody will recognize that conquest. now, this is wonderful on one hand, weak states can survive, but it has its downside. there's a downside which we talk about which is it weak states can survive, so can failed states. and failed states are breeding

grounds for terrorism and for insurgencies that don't respect national borders. so on the one hand, he outlaw of war between states has as virt, not completely, virtually eliminated interstate war. but if anything it has created pressures towards intrastate wars, and the wars that we are seeing nowadays are largely civil wars brought about by the fact that states don't need to be strong in order to survive. now, i'm going to include just by saying, there's a lot of data in the book. there is a lot of ideas in the book, philosophical ideas, but at the end it's a book about people. it's about people who most of us have never heard of, who were

courageous. they were ordinary people with extraordinary ideas, and they were able to change the world, and that i hope is an inspiration for all of us that it's possible for us to have agency in the world as well. thank you. [applause] >> that was wonderful. >> thank you. >> the timing of this obviously is striking between world war i and world war ii, but i'm also curious whether technology, how much it had to do with it. so we went from hand to hand

combat, soldiers just stabbed each other one at a time, to shooting at each other. and we are at this point acquiring the ability to wipe out thousands of people at a go. we have airplanes. we've got bombs. we're moving toward the atomic bomb. so did that factor into their thinking and the urgency with which they wanted to do this? >> that's a great question. let me say, so a lot, so sometimes, you know, you think the outlaw of war was the result of world war i, which if there was, i mean, most wars are stupid, to tell you the truth. world war i was a particularly stupid war, a terrible, terrible waste of life. but it wasn't merely the fact

that so many people died. it's how they died. you know, the invention of poison gas, earlier the gatling gun which enabled her to be automatic fire, the increase in tonnage of armament made for even more ghastly than it had been before. but, and here's what i find amazing. the response after world war i in the league of nations was not to outlaw war. the league of nations in the covenant of the league of nations allowed states to go to war. it just says that if you're going to go to war, come to us first. if you come to us first, let us adjudicate your dispute. but you don't actually have to listen to us. you just have to wait 60 days in thing you can go to war, even if you lose. so it is actually amazing to me

that after the cataclysm of world war i the response was, well, let's just have war but just wait 60 days, which is an enormous failure of imagination but it also shows how deeply ingrained the idea of the right to wage war was among diplomats. .. outlying war is an

opportunity but the problem. how do we solve problems if states don't have the right to use force against one another? we have gotten really good at that. the iran nuclear deal is an example of avoiding war but i am sad to say the current administration seems to be forgetting this lesson and his backsliding and the message of the book is to backslide. >> with context of the pact, what was the us justification for the gulf war, the war

against iraq and afghanistan? >> those are great questions. the pact -- is two paragraphs but it is one awkward paragraph that doesn't say much. it fits on the back of the postcard and i have one of those. basically the high contracting parties hereby renounce a solution to international controversies. it doesn't say anything about self defense, it doesn't say anything about anything. it is very vague. the person who wrote the brand pact a medieval historian named james shotwell at columbia university wrote the first draft of the united nations charter.

the un charter begins, survives in the form of the un charter. the un charter due to an armed attack which -- the second thing is the consent, the state allows you to go to war with it, the security council authorizes these. in the case of afghanistan and the first gulf war there was security council authorization, in the case of the first gulf war was a contrast which the security council, was -- tried

to reverse. patella been supported out qaeda and that was a self-defense justification that was ratified by the security council. the iraq war, an illegal war, justification given by the united states which in my own view is laughable, and when you of it one of the worst things that happened since world war ii. and the united states which was so pivotal in constructing the pact and the in the 21st centu.

you may ignore everything else i have said. the 21st century, the united states which is undermining the thing that it helped to build. >> what changes do you see or predict will happen in the world order moving forward? >> wow. >> in the 21st century. >> i could give you an unbelievably good answer about the 20th century.

okay. none of us knows. i feel like we are at this in flexion point. that is, we don't know what is happening with the international order. it could go one of two ways. certainly the rhetoric of the trump administration has been very disheartening. take the oil, secretary tillerson has said we will now, the united states military will not only fight in syria but we will stay in syria. i don't even know what to say about that. what would be the legal justification for that? fired cruise missiles last april after chemical weapons attack which was blatantly

illegal and in fact the government is not even trying to justify it. it has withdrawn from tpp, it is trying to withdraw from nafta, threatened to withdraw from nato. all of these things are extremely worrying. and then we have the rise of nationalism in europe, brexit, the rise of white winged populism, china growing by leaps and bounds and it is not clear what kind of rules it wants. we are not doing anything to stop its expansion in the south china sea. since we withdrew from tpp, the rest of the world moved on and created its own tpp without the united states and therefore any

type of environmental regulation we want to put in, we had no influence over. i don't know, things depend on the midterm elections, robert mueller, the immigration crisis in europe. i wish i knew. once i do know is that if you are complacent about it, i would like to have what you are having. because i am very worried. >> as a follow-up to that it is apparent to all of us the scope of what you are writing about can be huge, tremendous. as an author how did you come to a decision point or

realization that you would limit your book to less than 5000 pages? >> we use an age-old theoretical metric which was the publisher said no more than 150,000 words, so that was the principal decision that we made. there was so much left on the cutting room floor and in fact it is too that my colleague is not here because she is much more articulate than i am but we had such a good relationship that we would write something, give it to the other person, they would to just edit it ruthlessly and she had a chapter, i put the cursor at the beginning and went in, 10,000 words, put it at the end

and hit just because we had to aluminate 50,000 words. so the thing is it is a paradox in writing, less is more. you have to make hard choices. it is great, we had a great editor in the editor said 150,000 words and the manuscript is 150,310 words. we are also lawyers. >> got to give it to them. >> i am sure he just picked that number out of a hat so it was an enormous thing because we start with hugo process defending his pirate, in the course of defending his cousin, the pirate, developed the classical laws of the old world

order and ended up with isis. a lot of stuff we covered and a lot of stuff we didn't. so yes. >> this is in two parts. what about vietnam? have we ever been sanctioned for anything? and if you want to be an activist which i do, you have any suggestions for how to do that? >> first of all let's point out we lost vietnam, that was a big sanction in and of itself. vietnam and korea, we talk about this in the book, are really tricky cases, really tricky cases because both in vietnam and korea what happened

was there was a vacuum created after world war ii when the japanese withdrew from these regions and left no sovereign in its place. they created if you will a legal black hole. the korean and vietnamese war was a world in which who was the new sovereign? there was no way to establish with the new sovereign was because the sovereign, the japanese, just left. it was like an abandoned house where nobody had title. from a strategic point of view it was a foolish thing, from a humanitarian point of view it was a foolish thing that the united states engaged in this activity. as an activist i will tell you these -- the state of the antiwar movement in this country is not healthy. there are many organizations, i

have worked with them, love them, they are courageous, but they are, they are underpopulated, underfunded and there are lots of reasons for that. one of the organizations we write about in the book, the women's international league for peace and freedom, they still exist today, we have spoken to them, they are and make an organization. there are all these organizations to work with but, if i want to be really honest here, the midterms, as a short-term goal and as a longer-term goal, both parties, both parties, the democrats and the republicans, are addicted to war. that is the sad truth. the book is a nonpartisan book.

it is not a pox on the republicans house because democrats are at i don't know as bad but pretty bad in this respect. as activists, we ought to be out there pointing out the real damage the forever wars are creating to the world, to our domestic politics, to humanity. >> is there any academic, legal research going on now toward a new pact? >> one of the organizations which i greatly admire, world

without a war run by david swanson, he has been trying to get other countries to adopt the pact. there have been attempts to get states to adopt the pact. my own thought is we don't need some. we just need to pay attention to the thing we already have. what is happening now is we are overturning the applecart which millions of people died to create, which has made the world more prosperous and safer as a result and the goal for the future is we want to build on what we have but we really want to preserve the gift of

the greatest generation. people talk about it for cyberwar and that is something i'm working on. in terms of other things, no. [applause] >> thank you. don't forget the yellow buckets as you go out which if you have extra jewelry, pocket change, that will be great, thank you. well done. [inaudible conversations]