TAILIEUCHUNG - Recourse to Force State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks

This book has developed from a series of lectures given in November 2000 at Cambridge University’s Lauterpacht Research Centre for In- ternational Law. Both that institution’s founder, Professor Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, and its director, Professor James R. Crawford, served up invaluable insights together with fulsome hospitality. The Centre’s fac- ulty, fellows and students stimulated and prodded my thinking about the role of law in a world still so far short of the goals set by Judge Sir Hersch Lauterpacht | Recourse to Force State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks THOMAS M. FRANCK This page intentionally left blank Recourse to Force State Action Against Threats and Armed Attacks The nations that drafted the UN Charter in 1945 clearly were more concerned about peace than about justice. As a result the Charter prohibits all use of force by states except in the event of an armed attack or when authorized by the Security Council. This arrangement has only very imperfectly withstood the test of time and changing world conditions. It did not anticipate the Cold War which incapacitated the Security Council through the permanent members frequent recourse to the veto. In requiring states not to use force in self-defense until after they had become the object of an actual armed attack the Charter failed to address a growing phenomenon of clandestine subversion and of instantaneous nuclear threats. Perhaps most of all the Charter failed to make allowance for the dramatic rise in public support for human rights. Fortunately although the Charter is very hard to amend the drafters did agree that it should be interpreted flexibly by the United Nations principal political institutions. In nearly sixty years the text has undergone extensive interpretation through this practice. In this way the norms governing use of force in international affairs have been adapted to meet changing circumstances and new challenges. The book also relates these changes in law and practice to changing public values pertaining to the balance between maintaining peace and promoting justice. THOMAS M. FRANCK is Murry and Ida Becker Professor of Law and Director Center for International Studies at New York University School of .

• Thư viện thông tin
• Hersch Lauterpacht
• Charter system
• banning violence
• perpetual peace
• drafters’ vision
• original intent
• Assembly powers