CYIL 2012

“SUCCEEDING GENERATIONS“ IN THE UNITED NATIONS CHARTER… (b) the preservation and the projection of the collective UN history into the future; and (c) retaining the interdependence between individual and collective memory of the UN origins and its relevance to the present times, making the transmission of the UN common values work as a vibrant interactive process rather than (and merely) passing it on as “a tradition”, is essential in a successful domestic and international rule-of-law process. This is relevant to the current youth generation, future policy-makers orientated by “here and now” concerns. In their memory they tend to define or distort historical thinking as inconvenient to the learners. 40 Regarding the reconnection, Cherif Bassiouni, one of the most eminent public international law experts, noted that the basic difference between bureaucratic and academic knowledge is that the former is guided by mandate and authority and the latter by concept and method. 41 If such a gaffe were to be prevented, then the task of the United Nations Criminal Justice Studies should be to reconnect one with another, so the knowledge will not be fragmented and serve well the authority. Regarding the streamlining, besides this generic difference there is a more important difference. It makes such Studies even more needed: the current Western academic knowledge tends to be value-free, while the UN knowledge is value-laden. In other words, the essential difference between one, and the other rests in the commitment to the promotion of social justice. This qualitative difference with the academic world (i.e. the United Nations’ promotion of social justice) stems from the Preamble and article 55 of the Charter. If the Western academic knowledge were to serve better the United Nations Studies, then the commitment of the former to the latter should be more viable and both should complimentarily help one another in serving social science objectives. This value-laden pursuit may not necessarily (if at all) be supported by the academic knowledge and education, and so by the students, scholars, lawyers and others in the Western world claiming political neutrality for liberal education. But, hopefully, “many graduates, both legal professionals and others, also come to understand the limits of law as an agent of social change. In most societies, mere changes in the substance of law do not by themselves create a deeper connection between lives of citizens in their local communities and the overall community of the nation”. 42

40 For a more comprehensive argument, see: Dornansky, E., Welzer, H., Eine offene Geschichte: Zur kommunikativen Tradierung der nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit , Tübingen: Edition diskord, 1999,

esp. Einleitung (Introduction) by H. Welzer. 41 See further: Redo, op. cit., pp. 49 & 205.

42 Gallant, K. S., Learning from communities: Lessons from India on clinical method and liberal education, in: Trubek, L. G., Cooper, J ., Educating for Justice Around the World. Legal education, Legal Practice and the Community , Ashgate, Dartmouth 1999, pp. 222-232.

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