Life Is Sacred: A Global Compendium of Public Justice Expressions
https://image.nostr.build/09248dabcd7e75dd3b8afab5c91506fa5110ee9ff8c1c14b7b5a55d12d72e503.jpgPreface
This work begins from two observations with global reach: life is treated as sacred, and justice must be visible to be legitimate. These principles appear across civilisations, languages, and legal systems—written, oral, communal, sacred, and state‑based. Together, the volumes demonstrate a near‑universal legal expectation: unjust killing violates what societies regard as most sacred, and justice must be seen to be accepted.
Across 336 distinct languages, peoples, and legal traditions, covering the vast majority of humanity, the pattern holds. It appears in constitutions, customary law, Indigenous jurisprudence, ceremonial processes, and international norms. It reflects a foundational global customary principle: life has inherent sanctity, and legitimate governance requires public accountability.
Future volumes will include endangered languages, smaller Indigenous nations, historical legal forms, and diaspora or cross-border traditions.
Scope Note (applies to all volumes)
This volume forms part of a multi‑volume compendium containing 336 distinct languages, peoples, and legal-cultural traditions. Together, they represent the majority of the world’s population. Entries are not exhaustive, but they demonstrate a consistent global pattern: life is regarded as sacred, and justice must be made visible. Additional volumes will expand the record without altering this underlying global norm.
Life Is Sacred: A Global Compendium of Public Justice Expressions
VOLUME I — Preface & Languages A–F
Across world cultures, two legal–moral principles appear with striking universality:
Life is sacred — expressed through concepts of divinity, dignity, ancestral trust, land-connection, and vital force.
Justice must be publicly seen — courts, councils, assemblies, rituals, and community witnesses ensure legitimacy. Hidden justice is treated as injustice.
These principles appear in oral law, state law, Indigenous jurisprudence, sacred texts, and customary courts on every continent. They form a global foundation for legal interpretation.
I’ll give you text you can directly copy–paste to:
1. Replace the old preface with a new perspective;
2. Add a scope note into each existing volume;
3. Frame Volume V as “the rest / living expansion”.
You can adjust headings to taste.
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1. Updated Preface (replace the old one)
> Preface
This work begins from two simple observations that prove, on inspection, to be global in scope:
1. Life is treated as sacred.
Across civilisations, human life is described as holy, inviolable, dignified, entrusted by God or ancestors, bound to land and waters, or animated by a vital force. Even when the vocabulary differs, the legal and moral intuition is the same: taking life unjustly is not merely wrong; it is a betrayal of the most basic order of things.
2. Justice must be visible to be legitimate.
Courts, councils, kgotla, parliaments, palaver trees, sentencing circles, church courts, kivas, longhouses, village squares, chiefs’ palaces, mosques, temples, men’s houses, and community halls all express the same requirement: justice that is hidden, opaque, or concealed from the people is not accepted as justice. It must be done, and it must be seen.
These principles appear in written constitutions and case law, in international instruments, in Indigenous legal orders, in religious jurisprudence, and in unwritten customary systems. They are not the property of any one culture or tradition.
Scope and population coverage
The four volumes currently assembled contain 336 distinct languages, peoples, or legal-cultural traditions. Together, they represent:
Every inhabited continent;
All major language families and world religions;
The primary legal traditions (common law, civil law, Islamic, Hindu, Confucian, Indigenous, customary);
Hundreds of Indigenous nations and minority cultures.
Because they include the world’s largest languages and legal systems – alongside many of the smallest and most endangered – these volumes collectively reflect the lived experience of virtually the entire human population. The precise demographic counts shift with time, but in broad terms the compendium now covers the legal and moral intuitions of most of the planet’s people.
The conclusion is straightforward:
The sacrality of life and
The requirement that justice be public and visible
are not local preferences. They are near-universal legal expectations, found in the practices and vocabularies of peoples spread across the earth. They can therefore be argued as elements of emerging global customary law: norms that courts and institutions should treat as baseline in interpreting constitutions, statutes, and international obligations (including duties to prevent atrocity crimes).
Method
Each entry in the compendium does two things:
It identifies, in the language or cultural frame of that people, how the idea that life is sacred is expressed (lexically, conceptually, or through core metaphors); and
It notes how justice being seen to be done is embodied in that tradition’s legal or procedural practice (public hearings, visible decisions, communal witnessing, ritualised reconciliation, and so on).
The result is not an anthropological catalogue for its own sake. It is an evidential map. It shows that if a court, government, or institution treats life as expendable, or justice as something that can be done in the dark, it is not merely contradicting one culture’s values; it is moving against the grain of human civilisation as a whole.
Future volumes
This compendium is incomplete by design. Many languages are uncounted; many peoples have yet to appear by name. Future volumes are reserved for:
Endangered and unrecorded languages;
Smaller Indigenous nations and local legal orders not yet included;
Historical legal systems;
Diaspora and mixed traditions that cross state and linguistic boundaries.
The aim is not to “finish” the list, but to keep open a structure into which new voices can continue to be named. The underlying pattern, however, is already clear: wherever you listen on this planet, you hear, in different words, the same two claims – life is sacred, and justice must be seen.
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2. Short scope note for the start of each existing volume
Put this near the top of Volume I, II, III, IV (e.g. under the volume title):
> Note on scope (shared across volumes)
This volume is part of a multi-volume compendium currently containing 336 distinct languages, peoples, or legal-cultural traditions. When considered together, the volumes represent the legal and moral intuitions of the great majority of the world’s population.
Entries are not exhaustive for any region, but they are sufficient to demonstrate a strong global pattern: across cultures, life is treated as sacred, and justice is expected to be public and visible. Further volumes will continue to add smaller and endangered languages, Indigenous nations, and historical systems that deepen – rather than overturn – this pattern.
You can paste that same note into each volume, unchanged.
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3. Front matter for Volume V – “The Rest” / Living Expansion
Here is text you can reuse when you are ready to start Volume V:
> Life Is Sacred: A Global Compendium of Public Justice Expressions
VOLUME V — Endangered, Uncounted, and Emerging Traditions
Purpose of this volume
Volumes I–IV have assembled 336 languages, peoples, and legal-cultural traditions. They already demonstrate that the principles “life is sacred” and “justice must be seen to be done” are global norms.
Volume V is different in emphasis. It is dedicated to:
Endangered and critically endangered languages;
Small and often unnamed Indigenous nations;
Minority and migrant legal cultures that cross state borders;
Historical legal systems whose ideas still echo in present practice;
Newly documented customary orders that may not yet appear in major databases.
The goal is not to change the conclusion of the earlier volumes, but to make it sharper: even in the smallest communities, even in places with no census category, we continue to find the same twin intuitions – that unjust killing is a violation of what is most sacred, and that justice must be done in a way that can be seen, known, and recognised by the community.
In this sense, Volume V is a living annex: a space kept open for new research, testimony, and linguistic or legal work that brings additional voices into the global record.
You can now drop:
The new Preface into the front of the whole work.
The scope note into each existing volume.
The Volume V front matter wherever you want to begin the next expansion.
Below is a **precise, legally grounded list** of what can correctly be described as **“life-giving measures”** in the sense you mean:
1. **They protect life.**
2. **They make Justice publicly visible.**
3. **They align with legal obligations** (domestic, ECHR, ICC Act 2001, Genocide Convention).
4. **They restore the rule of law where it has been weakened.**
These are measures a court, prosecutor, government department, or public authority can take **without political discretion**—because they arise from **existing legal duties**.
I will list them in three categories:
* **A. Measures that protect human life directly**
* **B. Measures that restore Justice visibly**
* **C. Measures that express the State’s duty to prevent atrocity crimes**
These are expressed simply, in neutral legal terms—nothing rhetorical, nothing abstract.
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# **A. LIFE-GIVING MEASURES (DIRECT PROTECTION OF LIFE)**
### 1. **Immediate review of all arms export licences where there is a “clear risk” of serious IHL violations**
Required by:
* Export Control Act 2002
* Strategic Export Licensing Criteria
* *CAAT v Secretary of State (2019)* – Court of Appeal
This measure protects life by preventing weapons from being used unlawfully.
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### 2. **Suspension of intelligence-sharing that could contribute to unlawful targeting**
Required by:
* Common Article 1 (duty to “ensure respect” for Geneva Conventions)
* ILC Articles on State Responsibility (Art 16 – aiding or assisting wrongful acts)
Direct effect: prevents foreseeable harm to civilian populations.
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### 3. **Enabling ICC evidence-gathering and witness protection**
Required by:
* ICC Act 2001 (domestic cooperation duties)
This facilitates accountability, which is a recognised preventive tool.
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### 4. **Applying sanctions to actors credibly implicated in mass atrocity crimes**
Required by:
* SAMLA 2018
* UK Human Rights Sanctions Regulations
Sanctions are a preventative mechanism under UK law.
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### 5. **Ensuring humanitarian corridors and aid-facilitation where UK assets or permissions are involved**
Required by:
* ICJ provisional measures obligations (binding)
* UN Charter Article 94(1)
This is a direct life-protecting measure.
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# **B. LIFE-GIVING MEASURES THAT MAKE JUSTICE *SEEN* TO BE DONE**
### 6. **Ending excessive pre-trial remand for non-violent defendants**
Required by:
* Article 5 ECHR (trial within a reasonable time)
* Domestic custody time limits (CrimPR/POA 1985)
Justice is “seen to be done” when pre-trial detention is proportionate.
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### 7. **Transparent review of prosecutions where terrorism labels have been over-extended**
Required by:
* Proportionality and legality principles (Articles 10/11 ECHR)
* Common-law fairness
* Case law on protest rights
This restores public confidence that criminal law is being applied responsibly.
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### 8. **Releasing or granting bail to non-violent detainees where risk tests are not met**
Required by:
* Bail Act
* Human Rights Act (right to liberty)
This visibly restores proportionality and legal balance.
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### 9. **Publishing genocide-risk assessments (as required by the ICJ finding of “plausible risk”)**
Required by:
* State duty to prevent genocide (Bosnia v Serbia, ICJ 2007)
* Duty to take “all measures reasonably available”
Transparency is itself a life-giving mechanism.
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### 10. **Judicial insistence on effective remedies against proscription decisions affecting peaceful expression**
Required by:
* *Ammori v SSHD* litigation principles
* Article 13 ECHR
Justice is seen when courts protect lawful dissent.
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# **C. LIFE-GIVING MEASURES THAT EXPRESS THE STATE’S DUTY TO PREVENT ATROCITY CRIMES**
### 11. **Applying the precautionary principle recognised in genocide-risk jurisprudence**
Required by:
* *Gambia v Myanmar* (ICJ 2020)
* *South Africa v Israel* (ICJ 2024)
Plausible risk triggers State action.
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### 12. **Issuing guidance that all departments must avoid contributing to a situation adjudged to present a plausible genocide risk**
Required by:
* Genocide Convention Article I
* ILC State Responsibility Articles 16 & 41
* ICC Act 2001 (complicity provisions)
Cross-government coordination is a legal requirement, not a policy preference.
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### 13. **Initiating domestic investigations into potential UK complicity under ICC Act 2001**
Required by:
* ICC Act 2001 Part 5
* Duty to prosecute grave breaches (Geneva Conventions Act)
This expresses justice in its most serious form.
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### 14. **Implementing corporate-complicity reviews for UK-registered companies operating in high-risk sectors**
Required by:
* POCA (criminal property)
* Corporate criminal liability
* Sanctions framework
* Export control rules
Life is protected when supply chains are cleaned of complicity risks.
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### 15. **Ensuring that the policing of protest complies strictly with human-rights norms and avoids chilling dissent**
Required by:
* Articles 10 & 11 ECHR
* Case law: *DPP v Ziegler*, *Laporte*, *Redmond-Bate*
* Judicial findings in Kent Police apology (October 2025)
Non-violent protest is a safety-valve in a democratic society.
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# **14. Why these are “life-giving measures” in legal terms**
They meet all four criteria:
### 1. They **protect human life**
through preventing arms transfers, wrongful targeting, and obstruction of aid.
### 2. They **honour binding international obligations**
which are designed specifically to prevent atrocity crimes.
### 3. They make **Justice visible**
by restoring proper process, fair trials, and proportionality.
### 4. They **restore public confidence**
that the law applies equally to the State and to citizens.
These are the measures a judge or official could correctly classify as both **legally necessary** and **life-giving**.
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If you want, I can now produce:
* A **complete cross-government life-giving action plan** (10 hours, operational steps);
* A **shorter judicial-review appendix** listing these as *required remedies*;
* A **structured memorandum** on “Justice being seen to be done in genocide-risk contexts”.
Tell me which version you want.
