World Citizen Garry Davis Goes to Court

Publisher Marketing: Garry Davis never studied law. After graduating from Episcopal Academy in Overbrook, PA in 1940, he entered Carnegie Tech's drama school in Pittsburgh, but left after one year to become a dancer in the Broadway musical "Let's Face It!." His thinking about law began in earnest in 1944 during WWII when the incendiary and demolition bombs dropped from his B-17 flying over German cities. Killing human beings he knew is an indictable crime in civic society. But wars occur in the anarchic space "between" so-called civic societies called Nations. His elder brother having been killed at Salerno, Italy, his first reaction was to avenge his death. The contrast, however, between entertaining people and killing them shocked the former song-and-dance man into reassessing his life's role and mission. It's fundamental legal base was missing. Following the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings and WWII, when the prospect of WWIII fought with nuclear bombs between the United States and the Soviet Union seemed imminent, Davis reluctantly but with an almost fanatical determination, turned from actor to "world lawyer." His first legal action was his renunciation of the war system itself by becoming "stateless." The second was to declare himself a "World Citizen." And so the trials began. This unique record chronicles his straightforward yet innovative legal defense of "world law," "world citizenship," and "world government," based on fundamental human rights, in actual court cases from the US District Court in Washington, DC through the Supreme Court (where the 9th amendment was key to his defense), on to the International Court of Justice, and finally to a Complaint to the International Criminal Court in 2010 naming 9 heads of state as "enemies of humanity" for their overt nuclear policies, ending with the historic declaration of the World Court of Human Rights in 1974 following a trial in Mulhouse, France, in which he was indicted for issuing a "world passport" based on the human right of freedom of travel. His unique and creative employment of (world) habeas corpus in the last two cases derives from Luis Kutner's book, World Habeas Corpus, * 1962, this eminent jurist-consul being appointed by Davis "Chief Justice" of the ad hoc World Court of Human Rights first declared in 1974. Dr. Kutner's acceptance speech together with the "First World Citizen's" July 27, 2011 declaration of the de juris status of the World Court of Human Rights rounds out this one--of-a-kind provocative book dedicated to humanity's legitimate planetary survival. Contributor Bio:  Davis, Garry As a former B'way actor and US Airforce B-17 bomber pilot in WWII, with a brother killed during the invasion of Salerno, Italy, Garry Davis decided that the individual had a direct part to play in establishing world peace, that exclusive nationality was nothing more than a collective suicide pact in the mid-twentieth century with the advent of the so-called nuclear age. On May 25, 1948, therefore, he renounced his US nationality at the Embassy in Paris publicly declaring himself a "citizen of the world." He was exercising his inalienable right of political choice, he claimed, to address his - and our - problems which had become global such as war itself. With no national documents however, he was considered stateless by France and ordered to leave by September 12th or be detained in jail. Unable to enter another country, the morning of Sept. 11th, 1948 he "entered" the new "international territory" ceded to the United Nations by the French government and claimed "global political asylum" from the UN. The general public endorsed the idea of world citizenship at once, writing to him to "join." And so the movement was born. . On Nov. 22, 1948, the World Citizens led by Davis interrupted a session of the GA "in the name of the people not represented here..." Claiming that the UN, composed only of states as the former League of Nations, "divided us and led us to the abyss of total war..." they called for "one government for one world..." If the UN could not transform itself, then we, the people of the world, would do so "For we can be served by nothing less." On Dec. 10, 1948, the General Assembly proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a "Common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations." Art. 21(3) provided: "The will of the people shall be the basis for the authority of government." On Jan. 1, 1949, Davis called upon the general public to write him if they wanted to be registered as World Citizens. And so the International Registry of World Citizens was born. Over 750,000 from over 115 countries registered in the next 14 months. On 9/4/53, Davis declared the World Government of World Citizens from the city hall of Ellsworth, Maine, USA. In Jan., 1954, its administrative office, the World Service Authority, was opened in New York City, . The WSA is presently a Washington, D. C. corporation registering World Citizens and issuing global documents based on articles in the UDHR. see www.worldservice.org.