The Chicago Draft Constitution
by Richard Carter, La Honda, CA

In l945, just at the end of the second world war, Robert Maynard Hutchins, Chancellor of the University of Chicago, had a vision, prompted as it was by the horrific events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the world would be united one way or another -- in cremation, or in creation of a political framework that could save our skins. This vision, prompted other faculty members to develop a committee dedicated to devising a world constitution capable of establishing a just order for all the world peoples.
Thus was born the Committee to Frame a World Constitution. It was fed by three rich veins: the history of law and international law, the concept of universal human rights, and the political expertise and philosophy of the ten members of the Committee. For the next two years, this stellar group then met thirteen times to consider more than 150 research documents produced by them and other scholars as a basis for a constitution for the democratic, federal government of the world.
The outcome, three years later, was their Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution, which appeared in March l948. While it does, of course, reflect known elements of constitutional and international law, it is unique in many aspects. [Notice the title says "preliminary draft." The Committee did not pretend to provide THE constitution the world should adopt.]
As they wrote, "A constitution, any constitution, is three things in one. It is a manifesto or proclamation of principles. It is a political organism. It is a juridical mechanism." (These quoted comments are from the commentary to the Draft as published by the University of Chicago Press in 1948.) Further: "The purpose that differentiates this Committee from the many associations or institutions that either promote the general idea of World Government or specialize in the proposal of particular amendments to the U.N. Charter, is to embody the idea of world government in an exact and organic pattern of World Law."
The stated purposes of the University of Chicago constitution differed from earlier efforts in that its were uniquely positive. While the Covenant of the League of Nations begins by stating, "In order to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war…"; and the United Nations Charter starts with, "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…", the Preamble to the Draft Constitution affirms, "The people of the earth having agreed that the advancement of man in spiritual excellence and physical welfare is the common goal of mankind, that universal peace is the prerequisite for the pursuit of that goal; that justice in turn is the prerequisite of peace, and peace and justice stand or fall together" -- for these purposes, "the governments of the nations have decided to order their separate sovereignties in one government of justice…."
The first article reinforces the Preamble: "The universal government of justice as covenanted and pledged in this Constitution is founded on the Rights of Man.” Novel? You bet; traditional international law gave "personality" only to independent sovereign states, certainly not to "the people."
The rights of man stem from "the unwritten law which philosophies and religions alike called the Law of Nature which the Republic of the World shall strive to see universally written and enforced by positive law…." The envoi of this Article may seem utopian indeed: "the four elements of life-- earth, water, air, energy--are the common property of the human race."
That "the people" should hold up the world is reinforced in the beginning of Article 3, on the structure of the government: "The sovereignty of the Federal Republic of the World resides in the people of the world," who will bestow the "primary powers": the Federal Convention, the President, the Council, the Grand Tribunal, the Supreme Court and the Tribune of the People; and the Chamber of Guardians.
If the people are sovereign, how do you provide a government elected by all the people of the world? This problem was addressed by the Constitution’s writers in a unique way, They proposed that the Federal Convention shall be made up of one representative per million of population, an idea that made many people blanche: 1300 east Indians and only 250 Americans? In a bold invention the Committee provided, in Article 5, their solution: "the Federal Convention shall subdivide into nine Electoral Colleges according to the nine Societies of the kindred nations and culture, or regions, wherefrom its members derive their powers…." The nine regions are: Europa, Atlantis, Eurasia, Afrasia, Africa, India, Asia Major, Austrasia, and Columbia. Each of these electoral colleges then nominates 27 candidates for the Federal Council. The Federal Convention then chooses nine from each list and 18 from outside organizations for a total of 99. This Council is the primary legislative branch. Each of the nine colleges also nominates three candidates for President. The Convention chooses three from the 27, then by a two-thirds vote selects one as President. He then appoints a Chancellor to represent him in the Council. Thus, "equal representation, theoretically and politically desirable, "becomes" acceptable on the basis of purposively balanced Regions." One of the reviewers expressed the opinion of many: "The master-stroke, of course, is nomination by the regions combined with election by the whole Convention. A real solution of the problem of combining local loyalty and public spirit!"
The judiciary is a Grand Tribunal of sixty justices appointed by the President as Chief Justice and approved by the World Council. The sixty are assigned to twelve each of five benches: constitutional issues; conflicts between the World Government and the member states; conflicts between the World Government and individual citizens; conflicts between member states; and interpretation and enactment of federal law.
A Supreme Court will be made up of one justice from each of the five benches, the Chief Justice, and the Chairman of the Council. They will also assign cases to the appropriate benches and will be responsible for establishing lower courts.
A second equally innovative provision is the election of a Tribune of the People, whose duties will primarily be "to defend the natural and civil rights of individuals and groups against violation or neglect by the World Government…." This person is a sort of ombudsman to champion the rights of the individual.
Finally, the "control and use of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of the World shall be assigned exclusively to a Chamber of Guardians under the chairmanship of the President in his capacity of "Protector of the Peace" with six others elected by the Council and the Grand Tribunal. In addition to minding the armed forces of the Republic, the Guardians will also determine "the numerical level that shall be set as limits to the domestic militias of the single communities and states or unions thereof."
Preceded by the sections outlining technical matters involving the World Government, Article 47, the last one, explains the ratification process. "The Founding Convention having discussed and approved by individual majority vote this Constitution, ratification by collective majorities within as many delegations of states and nations as represent two-thirds of the population of the earth, shall be sufficient for the establishment of the Federal Republic of the World."
Admittedly, this rather starchy declaration may lack some of the poetry of the U.S. Constitution, but it is politically correct and is sound international law, and as such is a worthy template for the generation of a true world government.
We have, fortunately, a current exercise in constitution making that shows just how this may play out. From he outset, world federalists saw that the "western European democracies" might provide the beginnings of a world federation; now, they are doing just that. The EU has already adopted "A Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe" and is busy translating that into a real basis for their political unity.
Kalypso Nicolaidis, in a Foreign Affairs article titled “We the Peoples of Europe…” provides an excellent analysis of this by stating, “In the half century since its creation, the EU has established itself as a new kind of political community: one that is defined not by a uniform identity --a demos-- but by the persistent plurality of is peoples--its demoi. She then refers to the new European society by the rather ungainly term, a demoicracy, but the definition is exact: "The EU is neither a union of democracies nor a union as democracy; it is a union of states and of peoples--a "demoicracy"-- in the making. It appeals to a political philosophy of its own transnational pluralism -- rather than to some extended notion of the nation-state."
This couldn't be more in keeping with the basic views of the Chicago Committee and provides us with a preliminary application of the Preliminary Draft. If this regional version flies, why, eventually, can't the world version?

Richard Carter worked for the Common Cause journal at the University of Chicago and as a leader of World Republic, an activist movement that sought to create a global constitutional convention in the 1950’s.