Building Anew 431Critics of the New Haven School lamented the highly jargonistic char-
acter of much of the writing produced by it. Some maintained that, de-
spite the extended lip ser vice paid to the methods of the social sciences,
there was not actually much real use of them. Moreover, the impact of
the New Haven School on the real world cannot be said to have been very
great— outside American law schools, where it found a ready welcome
by virtue of its liberal (but far from radical) ethos. Outside the academic
setting, however, it is diffi cult to identify any initiative or development
produced by it. One looks in vain through the work of the I.L.C. or the
World Court for any substantial trace of its infl uence. Th is may be an indi-
cation that the New Haven School represented, ultimately, more a state of
mind than a specifi c program of action. As such, its infl uence might be
more widely diff used— if also somewhat attenuated— than its critics would
suppose.
For those who were uneasy about the elitist outlook of the New Haven
School, a kind of mirror- image alternative was on off er in the United
States— a demo cratic, bottom- up approach counterpart. Th is was a program
called the World Order Models Project (or WOMP). Its major proponents in
fact emerged from under the capacious New Haven umbrella (Lasswell was
a member of the project’s sponsoring committee). One of its leading fi gures
was Saul Mendlovitz, at Rutgers Law School. Another was Richard Falk,
based in the Woodrow Wilson School at Prince ton. Although both Mend-
lovitz and Falk were greatly infl uenced by the New Haven School, they were
distinctly hostile to the idea of values imposed from above— and therefore
to traditional ideas of world government. Th eirs was a more po liti cally
sharp- edged version of solidarism, which looked to the displacement of
repressive elites and to a world of participatory democracy. It accordingly
favored a large role for nonstate and nongovernmental bodies in world
aff airs.
Solidarism, in short, was— and continues to be— a variegated and sprawl-
ing world. It has never been anything like a single school of thought, but in-
stead has been more in the nature of a general frame of mind. Th at may have
been a weakness rather than a strength. Solidarism has sometimes seemed
much longer on aspiration than on discernible achievement. Álvarez may
have trumpeted its message— or at least its spirit— from the bench of the
World Court. But in this, he spoke alone and not for the Court as a whole.