Leland M. Goodrich

From League of Nations to United Nations

On April 18, 1946, the League Assembly adjourned after taking the necessary steps to terminate the existence of the League of Nations and transfer its properties and assets to the United Nations. On August 1, this transfer took place at a simple ceremony in Geneva. Thus, an important and, at one time, promising experiment in international cooperation came formally to an end. Outside of Geneva, no important notice was taken of this fact. Within the counsels of the United Nations, there was an apparent readiness to write the old League off as a failure, and to regard the new organization as something unique, representing a fresh approach to the world problems of peace and security. Quite clearly there was a hesitancy in many quarters to call attention to the essential continuity of the old League and the new United Nations for fear of arousing latent hostilities or creating doubts which might seriously jeopardize the birth and early success of the new organization.

Conference diplomacy : an introductory analysis

Foreword Javier Perez de Cuellar - Preface and Acknowledgements - Abbreviations - PROLOGUE: Whither Conference Diplomacy? - Conference Diplomacy Defined: Objectives of Conferences - Decision-making in Conference Diplomacy: a General View - Conference Diplomacy: the Organizational Setting - Conference Diplomacy: the Human Setting - The Role of Presiding Officers - Secratariats and Conference Diplomacy - Delegations and Permanent Missions: Their General Characteristics - Conference Diplomats: Requirements and Characteristics - Groups and Conference Diplomacy - Tactics, Instructions, Speeches and Conciliation in Conference Diplomacy - The Madrid Peace Process on the Middle East and its Sequels - Appendix: European Union Decision-Making - Notes - Index

Korea : a study of U. S. policy in the United Nations

The author looks at the first occasion on which the United States became involved in war while fulfilling its obligations under the United Nations Charter: the Korean episode. This book is concerned principally with the interrelation of United States policies and those of the United Nations as they developed in Korea. It attempts to explain in what fashion and to what extent American policies with respect to Korea were modified by membership in the United Nations, and conversely, how United Nations policies were affected by the fact of American membership.

The United Nations and Domestic Jurisdiction

Referring to “domestic jurisdiction” as used in the League Covenant, Professor J. L. Brierly characterized it as “a new catchword,” capable of proving as great a hindrance to the orderly development of international law as “sovereignty” and “state equality” had been in the past, and about which “little seems to be known except its extreme sanctity.” Since these words were written, the Covenant of the League of Nations has been replaced by the Charter of the United Nations as the basic law of the organization of the world community. The concept of a reserved domestic jurisdiction is still with us. In fact, Article 2, paragraph 7, of the Charter gives it a broader definition and a wider range of application than did Article 15, paragraph 8, of the Covenant. What is the meaning of the domestic jurisdiction principle as set forth in the Charter? What effect has it had in practice on the working and development of the United Nations?

The Maintenance of International Peace and Security

It is a truism that the text of the Charter gives a quite misleading picture of the United Nations as it is today. In no respect is this more true than in the working of the Organization in the maintenance of international peace and security. Those provisions of the Charter which were claimed by its authors to provide the new Organization with teeth that the League of Nations did not have either have never been used or have in practice been of little importance. New emphases and new methods have been developed through the liberal interpretation of Charter provisions. These have not always been equally acceptable to all Members, however. The process of adaptation and development continues, with great present uncertainty as to what the future has in store.

The Political Role of the Secretary-General

For the purposes of this discussion, the political role of the Secretary General is defined in somewhat narrow terms. It is not intended to discuss his role in the development of policy generally, which would be a possible way of viewing the subject. Rather, attention will be given to the role of the Secretary-General in the discharge of one of the major responsibilities of the United Nations—the maintenance of international peace and security. Consequently, the role of the Secretary-General in developing and executing policies and programs of economic and social development, which has come to be one of the major fields of activity of the Organization, will not be touched upon, except incidentally.

Geographical Distribution of the Staff of the UN Secretariat

One of the perennial questions before the General Assembly and its Fifth Committee is that of the geographical distribution of the staff of the Secretariat. With the admission of sixteen new African members in 1960 and the sudden interest of the Soviet Union in filling its “quota,†the question took on special interest and urgency in the fifteenth and sixteenth sessions. The Committee of Experts, set up by the General Assembly in 1959 to review the organization and activities of the Secretariat, was asked to consider and make recommendations on certain aspects of the problem. The Fifth Committee spent much of its time during the sixteenth session in discussing the matter, and ended by inviting the Secretary-General to take into account the two draft resolutions introduced and views expressed in the Committee on the question, and to present to the General Assembly at its seventeenth session “a statement of his considered views on how to improve the geographical distribution of the staff of the Secretariat.†The question is, therefore, one which directly and immediately concerns the present position and future development of the Secretariat.

The UN Security Council

It has been the unfortunate fate of the United Nations to have been most conspicuously unsuccessful in performing that task which was to be its major responsibility and for which it was supposed to be best equipped. Naturally this has also been the fate of the Security Council upon which the Members of the Organization, by the terms of Article 24, conferred “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”. Against this background of failure and consequent dissatisfaction, many have been asking whether the Security Council is fated to become like the human appendix, an atrophied organ with no useful function to perform or whether the present condition is not one that can and should be remedied or that perhaps will be changed in any case by an improvement in the state of international relations. To form a judgment on these possibilities it is necessary to recall the original conception of the Security Council, to review its record, and to analyze the causes of its decline and the likelihood of their elimination or counterbalancing by other forces.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS. Towards a Global Federalism. Pp. xi, 177. New York: New York University Press, 1968.

title of a series of lectures given by Justice Douglas at New York University under the auspices of the James Stokes Lectureship in Politics. This book retraces the ground covered by those lectures and, in a challenging manner, typical of the author, calls attention to some of the major problems facing the world at present. The point of the title is not readily clear because the author, contrary to what might be expected, makes no explicit plea for &dquo;Union Now&dquo; or any other form of world federal union. However, it may be implicit in his general argument that the goal which he sets can only, or at best, be achieved through more advanced world organization in some form. The specific topics with which he deals

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century writers, distinguishing in the nineteeth century between positivists, eclectics, and naturalists, and in the twentieth century merely between positivists and eclectics. But the author is quite aware that the distinctions between the three groups are at times difficulty to draw, and while it may be easy to set an extreme positivist against an extreme naturalist, there is a middle zone in which the distinctions are relative rather than absolute. The problem is one, he observes, not of separating &dquo;the sheep from the goats,&dquo; but of determining the greater or less degree in which one or other attitude is to be found.