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edging that many people think such law cannot be effective as it is too abstract and difficult to enforce. He emphasized that in law as with every part of a society it takes the unwavering commitment of the global com- munity (and not just the legal profession) to pursue justice internationally. The Ambassador reminded us of one of the basic principles of living in a community: No matter how high ye may be, the law is always above you. Bob reminded us that the sovereignty of nations has been limited by trea- ties for hundreds of years but it is a myth to think that sovereignty is absolute; in the last century alone, the number of rules governing inter- national life has grown exponentially. The creation of the World Court, now known as the International Court of Justice, and more recently, the signing of the Rome Treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, have given us important pillars of the International Legal Order. But there exists a long list of treaties governing a wide breadth of topics such as the law of the sea, genocide, torture, climate change, protecting the ozone layer and the rights of children. The profound common sense reflected through the treaty system is that we need to “Build stronger common institutions in order to face the challenges of our time.” In Rae’s view, there is no doubt that international law is real law and, more importantly, the consequences of failing to observe its basic principles can also be very real. Ambassador Rae’s second theme, that both Canada and the United States have played key roles in the development of international law, has its roots in President Franklin Roosevelt’s January 6, 1941 “Four Freedoms” speech. At the time it was delivered, there had been war in Europe and Asia for many months. Canada had declared war on Germany about sixteen months earlier, following Germany’s invasion of Poland. Rae also reminded us that Germany’s invasion of Poland was preceded by accusations that Germany was being threatened by Polish aggression and that Germany’s invasion was entirely defensive. The Ambassador had heard those exact arguments from Russia’s United Nations representative earlier in the week. The German invasion of Poland was pre- ceded by two agreements which Roosevelt said “live in infamy.” The first was the 1938 Munich Agreement among the United King- dom, France, Italy and Hitler’s Germany, which allowed the carve-up of the sovereign state, Czechoslovakia, effectively signing over its territorial integrity. Second was the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which was allegedly a treaty of non-aggression and friendship between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but was really a secret deal to partition Eastern Europe between those two powers. The German invasion of Po- land followed shortly. Roosevelt was faced with a challenge. His 1940 campaign included promises that the United States would not enter a “foreign war,” but he recognized that the world’s biggest issue was dealing with dictators and the growth of authoritarianism. Winston Churchill’s Britain was attempting to bring America into the war. Roosevelt was not blind to his domestic po- litical reality and so his speech focused on the importance of four freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from fear and freedom from want. Ambas- sador Rae noted that many philosophers have debated how those four things fit to- gether, or whether they are arbitrary. But it is not necessary to resolve that question. The reality is that Roosevelt was speaking to freedoms which were not for Americans only: He was saying that everyone should have the same freedoms everywhere. Rae ob- 31 JOURNAL