Northern Arizona University/Philosophy of Law/Discussion of Online Texts/Discussion of the UN charter

UN Charter, Chapters I-VII

It is my understanding, after reading the first 7 chapters of the UN charter, that the UN and its charter is designed to be a very basic form of an international governing body. The Charter, much like the United States constitution, is primarily concerned with establishing the rules by which the UN will operate, as well as the powers that its shall have and what have you. The Charter states that one of the principle goals of the UN is to maintain international Peace and security. This goal can be likened to the purpose of the United states government in maintaining peace and healthy relations between the states. All in all the UN is very Similar to the US constitution.

However, the United States Constitution allows for the federal government o have, albeit limited, control over certain intra-state activites. These regulations are mostly concerned with the matter of state law contradicting with federal law, but the federal governemnt also has the power to intervene in state affairs when it feels government action is necessary, such as natural disasters, riots, and the like. The UN charter, at least as far as Chapter VII makes no mention of the UN being able to intervene in Intra-nation affairs. In fact, Chapter I, Article 2, part 7 explicitly states that nothing in the charter permits interference with state affairs. If this is so the UN would be nearly powerless, at least by the letter of the charter, to prevent agressive acts completely within a nation. Why would an organization designed to be a sort of international governing body not have a provision to interfere with nationally internal affairs?

The last part of the above mentioned passage, does make mention of exceptions regarding the content of chapter VII. Still, nothing in Chapter VII, at least as far as I have understood it, would allow for direct military intervention to possilbly time-sensitive issues concerning a nations internal affairs. Nearly all of the parts of chapter VII directly state that action will be taken to restor international peace, there is still no mention of intranational peace. This may be to help maintain a states soverergnty, or to prevent the UN from becoming to powerful. However, this lack of power still seems to be an oversight that could allow many isolated problem that require outside interference to go unsolved.

Quintin Lucas

UN Charter, Chapter VII, Article 51

THe Purpose of this article, as I interpret it, is to allow for individual nations, or collectives, the ability to defend themselves from imediate threats. Self-defense is a key aspect if a nation is able to live peacefully and without fear. As the UN is a sort of governing body and bound to have unavoidalbe ineffficiency, it is only reasonable that there be a provision allowing for an individual nation to defend itself untill the UN reaches a decision upon what action would best remedy the situation.

Three problems arrise out of this provision, first: how long and what measures count as self-defense? I imagine that the right to repel would be self-evident, but what about the right to prevent further aggression? Prevention of a bad situatiion is surely a much more desired result than having to deal with them as they occur. Second, if the UN does not reach an end to the situation that does not fully protect the rights of the assaulted nation, or if the UN refuses to take action at all, does the defending nation have the right to enact its own means? Third, does this provision even account for a nations defense agaisnt a body that is not a nation and therefore is not governed by the UN? Such a situation recently arose when the war on terror was started.

I hope that an answer to these questions is presented in later chapters of the charter, but up through chpater VII this is the only mention of self-defense. Wishful thinking that the UN will be able to form a soltuion that is entirely effective of satifactory is not enough. Surely the charter does not suspect that any nation will wait for UN action while its citizens are being killed. Then again, many aggressive actions could be made under the guise of self-defense. Maybe the autors of the charter purposely left this part obscure to account for the changing times and representatives so as to allow for dynamic interpretation.

Quintin Lucas

Statute of the International Court of Justice, Chapter I, Articles 2 and 9

Chapter I of this statute is mainly concerd with how the judges of the court wil be elected, who can be elected, and what their duties and abilities are while they are in fact a justice. Articles 2 and 9 seem state that the elected members can be of any nationality as long as they meet the requirements in aptitude and moral standing. Article 9 also states tat in electing the members, they general assemply should try to vote so that the members are representatives of the prime forms of civilization, and of the principle legal systems of the world as well. I can imagine this is to allow for adequate representation of the majority, but these articles give rise to two problems.

The first problem is from article 2, and is concerned with the notion of "persons of high moral character." The problem with this is that moral character is highly relative to country of origin. What is moral in one counrty may be a wicked offense in another. Surely the statue does not imply some form of ethnocentrism, and means only to elect people who are more likely to do a better job, but this is still an issue. The seccond problem is concerned with adequately representing civilization and legal systems. Once again i am sure the framers only had the best in mind, but this could easily lead to a sort of tyranny of the majority on an international scale. In addition, if each member of the court is acting under their national form of law, aggrement and dissents could be formed on entirely unrelated matters, that coul in reality conflict with another members "moral character." In this case, is adequate representation and the pursuit of "moral" judges going to far, and possilby hinder the overall viability of an international court?

These articles were added for the sake of trying to make things equal that is obvious. If this were not the case than ethnocentrism would be the law in the international court, and problems could not be avoided. However, it seems to me that the people must likely to be a party in an international dispute, are nations who are not a prime form of civilization, and likely have a failing legal system. I think the only solution to this would be to sit out and write separate laws, and form a legal system distinct to the International court that way all could be tryed equally.

Quintin Lucas