Peace, dignity, and the rule of law

The Nobel Committee has awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a lawyer and jurist who has served on the High Court in her own country of South Africa, and on international courts and tribunals. In announcing the prize, the Committee “remind[ed] the world that the rule of law – national and international – underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace.” And it explained that it selected Judge Pillay because her “commitment to justice and human dignity is a source of hope and inspiration to all who seek to bring about a more peaceful world.”

A number of concepts are swirling around in the Committee’s statements that are worth unpacking: the rule of law, peace, justice, and dignity. How are these connected?

In its brief press release, the Nobel Committee invokes the “rule of law” four times. The “rule of law” does not just mean laws, or courts. It means a commitment to a system in which disputes and differences are decided by law rather than by power or force. It is a commitment to accept the outcome of a legal dispute whether or not one agrees with it.  This idea has been a foundation of the United States since the very early days of the republic when Chief Justice John Marshall wrote “The Government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men.”[1] Men rule by arbitrary whim or fiat; law is consistent and reliable and, at its best, fair and just.

The commitment to the rule of law is a commitment to decide disputes peacefully. The alternative is violence and ultimately war. Or, as the Committee said, “History has shown that a world operating without the rule of law is unjust, unwise and inhumane.”

On the one side, there is law, peace, justice, and dignity; if we choose the alternative, all of these unravel.

The principle applies equally in domestic and international arenas. This is why international law developed with such fervor in the aftermath of World War II, with the establishment of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. Courts may be right and they may be wrong but the commitment to the legal process is essential for maintaining peace. “Peace requires justice,” as the Committee said.

In fact, the UN Charter’s preamble is instructive here too. It sets as the UN’s first priority to “end the scourge of war.” Immediately following is the determination to “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” The third goal of the UN is to promote “justice and respect” for international law, and the fourth is “to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.” (UN Charter, Preamble).

A few years later, the drafters of the UDHR – the first globally accepted human rights treaty and still by far the most influential – would reinforce the point when it opened with the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” which it said “is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

Echoing these bedrock principles of the post-war world order, today’s statement from the Nobel Committee recommitted to this same set of mutually reinforcing values: the commitment to law to promote peace, justice, and dignity. “At a time of existential challenges – including more wars and conflicts than the world has seen in a long time – international law is no longer just a supplement to peace and security. It is an absolute necessity.”

Given the Committee’s devotion to the institutions of the rule of law on which Pillay has served, one might ask why the prize went to an individual rather than to the institutions themselves. It is, of course, impossible to know the thinking of the Committee, but the explanation may lie in the concept of human dignity.

As important as these abstract principles are, and as crucial as are the institutions that uphold these principles, it is not the institutions or the principles that will protect us from violence and inhumanity. It is people. People, like Navi Pillay, who in reliance on their own dignity, spend their lives standing up for the dignity of others in order to bring about a more peaceful and just world. The prize was a testament to the importance of individual action. After all, it is not the institutions whose dignity is at stake, but ours.

[1] Marbury v. Madison, 5 US 137, 163 (1803). To emphasize the meaning of rule of law, Marshall wrote: “In Great Britain, the King himself is sued in the respectful form of a petition, and he never fails to comply with the judgment of his court.”