Lucy Law Webster spent almost eight decades working to end war through law. She died peacefully on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, at the age of 95. She was one of the longest serving members of the movement Citizens for Global Solutions grew from, and a friend and mentor to many of us.
Lucy wrote her first anti-war poem at nine, in response to the Second World War. It was published in Parents Magazine and imagined a day “when all the world’s laws obey.” At sixteen she started a world federalist chapter at Miss Fine’s School in Princeton, New Jersey. The town chapter met in Albert Einstein’s house on Mercer Street, and her student group was invited in. “He was charismatic with his white wild hair and inspired us all in our push for peace and world government,” she later wrote.
At Wellesley College she was elected national student chairman of the United World Federalists in 1952. She linked student groups at Harvard, MIT, Smith, Mount Holyoke and Wellesley into a New England council. In 1954 she represented the World Student Federalists at the World Assembly of Youth in Singapore. Some fifty chapters across the United States each sent $35 to “send Lucy Law around the world.” She repaid them with a year of talks in their towns, from Seattle to Florida.
Lucy married David Webster in 1955 and settled in London, where she built a career in marketing research and raised two sons. She chaired the Executive Committee of the international World Federalist Movement for a number of years, including at its 1980 congress in Tokyo.
In the early 1980s she moved to New York to work for UNICEF and then the United Nations Secretariat. She served as special assistant to the Secretary General of the Second World Conference to Combat Racism. Most of her UN career was spent as a Political Affairs Officer in the Department for Disarmament Affairs. She edited two UN disarmament publications and was liaison to the press and civil society at the 1990 and 1995 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conferences.
Retirement did not slow her down. She led Economists for Peace and Security as Executive Director and later served as its board secretary. She was Executive Director of the Center for War/Peace Studies, Vice Chair of the Council of the World Federalist Movement, and President of the New York chapter of Citizens for Global Solutions. From 2011 to 2020 she served on the board of the Citizens for Global Solutions Education Fund. As chair of the World Federalist Institute, she helped keep the organization’s founding ideas alive inside CGS. In 2019 she received the CGS Lifetime Achievement Award at our meeting in Los Angeles.
“When I first learned of the idea of a democratic world federation and wanted to get involved in the movement, she welcomed and encouraged me,” said Donna Park, former chair of the CGS Education Fund board. “I will always remember her fondly and with deep appreciation.”
“I was honored to work side by side with her for four decades,” said Larry David, chair of the CGS Education Fund board. “She was always there, always committed to the big outrageous goals of the world federalists, always smiling, always welcoming and always getting it done on our projects. Lucy was one of a kind that they don’t make any more.”
Lucy told her own story in a short memoir, My Life as a World Federalist. She ended it this way:
I’ve often viewed this struggle for a world government like walking up a down escalator. It’s not the easiest thing to do, but it’s better to walk up than just stand there!
My life as a world federalist has been exciting and rewarding even though we haven’t reached the summit. I sincerely hope that a new generation will get there and we will have lasting world peace.
Citizens for Global Solutions sends its deepest sympathy to Lucy’s family and to everyone she brought into this work. The best way to honor her is the one she asked for: a new generation taking the next step up.
Photos courtesy of the Webster family and Larry David.
