The World Court and Jus Cogens

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon A. Christenson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
United Nations Charter

In the merits phase of decision in the case brought by Nicaragua against the United States, the World Court briefly mentions references by states or publicists to the concept of jus cogens. These expressions are used to buttress the Court’s conclusion that the principle prohibiting the use of force found in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter is also a rule of customary international law.

Evidence, the Court, and the Nicaragua Case

1987 ◽  
Vol 81 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Highet
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Counter Measures ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
International Court ◽  
United Nations Charter ◽  
Multilateral Treaty

The decision in the Nicaragua case is one of the most important judgments ever delivered by the International Court. It is by far the “heaviest” case, in the parlance of the English barrister, ever decided by the Court in the absence of a party. It has broken new ground for the application of Article 53 of the Statute. It deals in detail with the multilateral treaty reservation of the United States (the “Vandenberg amendment”). It contains provocative reasoning about the genesis and maintenance of rules of customary international law, separate from treaties such as the United Nations Charter. It contains seminal findings on the use of force and the exercise of the inherent right of self-defense under Article 51 of the Charter. It presents fresh and doubtless controversial interpretations of the principle of nonintervention. It prescribes limits to “collective counter-measures” in response to conduct not deemed to amount to “armed attacks.”

The United States Reaction to the Korean Attack: A Study of the Principles of the United Nations Charter as a Factor in American Policy-Making

1961 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin C. Hoyt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Legal Principles ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Legal Factor ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
United Nations Charter

Little scholarly effort has been devoted to consideration of the part actually played by international law in national decision-making. Diplomatic historians have tended to neglect the legal factor. Political scientists have discussed the rôle of law largely in general terms. The effort of international lawyers has been focused on statement of what the law is supposed to be. Some of this attention might usefully be diverted to study of the place of the legal factor in the making of specific decisions. Such studies should make possible more realistic discussion of the question whether the policy-makers are assigning the degree of emphasis to the factor of international law which is best calculated to promote the national interests and values they aim to serve.What is attempted here is one case study focusing on the legal principles of the United Nations as a restraint and as an incentive to action in the United States reaction to the 1950 Communist attack in Korea. That reaction took two parts: (1) a decision to assist Korea within the framework of the United Nations, and (2) a decision to isolate Formosa from Communist attack by individual American action. After a brief outline of the Charter principles in question, we will consider the way in which each of these decisions was made, together with the domestic and international consequences in each instance.

The United States Accepts Compulsory Jurisdiction

1946 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 699-719 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis O. Wilcox
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Senate ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
One Year ◽  
United Nations Charter

On August 2, 1946, the United States Senate approved the Morse resolution by the overwhelming vote of 62-2, thereby giving its advice and consent to the acceptance on the part of the United States of the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. It was the same Senate which, just one year and one week earlier, had cast a vote of 89-2 in favor of the United Nations Charter. On August 26 Herschel Johnson, acting United States representative on the Security Council, deposited President Truman’s declaration of adherence with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. At long last the United States assumed far-reaching obligations to submit its legal disputes to an international court.

scholarly journals 9/11 as False Flag: Why International Law Must Dare to Care

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Baker Benjamin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
African History ◽  
The Us ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
International War

At the heart of contemporary international law lies a paradox: the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001 have justified 16 years of international war, yet the official international community, embodied principally in the United Nations, has failed to question or even scrutinise the US government's account of those attacks. Despite the emergence of an impressive and serious body of literature that impugns the official account and even suggests that 9/11 may have been a classic (if unprecedentedly monstrous) false-flag attack, international statesmen, following the lead of scholars, have been reluctant to wade into what appears to be a very real controversy. African nations are no strangers to the concept of the false flag tactic, and to its use historically in the pursuit of illegitimate geopolitical aims and interests. This article draws on recent African history in this regard, as well as on deeper twentieth-century European and American history, to lay a foundation for entertaining the possibility of 9/11-as-false-flag. This article then argues that the United Nations should seek to fulfil its core and incontrovertible ‘jury’ function of determining the existence of inter-state aggression in order to exercise a long-overdue oversight of the official 9/11 narrative.

Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law

1993 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-111
Author(s):  
Marian Nash
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
George Bush ◽  
Environment And Development ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Contemporary Practice

On September 8, 1992, President George Bush transmitted to the Senate for advice and consent to ratification the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted at New York on May 9, 1992, by the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change and signed on behalf of the United States at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro on June 12, 1992.

A Lack of Language – Waging War or Combatting Crime? The Blurred Rule of International Law in the Face of the Attacks of September 11, 2001

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (17) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Binder
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
The Face ◽  
The United Nations

After the terrorists' attacks of September 11, 2001, a lot of war rhetoric came out of the public and private sphere within the United States of America. On October 7, 2001, however, the rhetoric turned into reality as President George W. Bush countered the terrorist attacks and the threat of future terrorism with military means. While waging that new war U.S. governmental officials constantly make one important point, and that is that the United States are just exercising their right of self-defense. Moreover, on the day after the attacks, the Security Council of the United Nations unanimously reaffirmed the inherent right of self-defense as recognized by the Charter of the United Nations. Does that mean that international law is just that clear?

Instrumental Internationalism: The American Origins of the United Nations, 1940–3

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Wertheim
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Fast Moving ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
American Power ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Indispensable Tool

Why did the United States want to create the United Nations Organization, or any international political organization with universal membership? This question has received superficial historiographical attention, despite ample scrutiny of the conferences that directly established the UN in 1944 and 1945. The answer lies earlier in the war, from 1940 to 1942, when, under the pressure of fast-moving events, American officials and intellectuals decided their country must not only enter the war but also lead the world long afterwards. International political organization gained popularity – first among unofficial postwar planners in 1941 and then among State Department planners in 1942 – because it appeared to be an indispensable tool for implementing postwar US world leadership, for projecting and in no way constraining American power. US officials believed the new organization would legitimate world leadership in the eyes of the American public by symbolizing the culmination of prior internationalist efforts to end power politics, even as they based the design of the UN on a thoroughgoing critique of the League, precisely for assuming that power politics could be transcended.

“Imagined Territory: The Republic of China’s 1955 Veto of Mongolian Membership in the United Nations”

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 263-295
Author(s):  
Keith Allan Clark II
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Sovereign State ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
The Public ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Republic

In 1955, Jiang Tingfu, representing the Republic of China (roc), vetoed Mongolia’s entry into the United Nations. In the 26 years the roc represented China in the United Nations, it only cast this one veto. The roc’s veto was a contentious move because Taipei had recognized Mongolia as a sovereign state in 1946. A majority of the world body, including the United States, favored Mongolia’s admission as part of a deal to end the international organization’s deadlocked-admissions problem. The roc’s veto placed it not only in opposition to the United Nations but also its primary benefactor. This article describes the public and private discourse surrounding this event to analyze how roc representatives portrayed the veto and what they thought Mongolian admission to the United Nations represented. It also examines international reactions to Taipei’s claims and veto. It argues that in 1955 Mongolia became a synecdoche for all of China that Taipei claimed to represent, and therefore roc representatives could not acknowledge it as a sovereign state.

scholarly journals The Legality Of Nato'S Action In The Former Republic Of Yugoslavia (Fry) Under International Law

2000 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 910-925 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Chinkin
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
United Nations Charter

The use of force has been prohibited in international relations since at least the United Nations Charter, 1945. Article 2 (4) of the Charter states:All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the United Nations.

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