Book Reviews Schachter, Oscar, and Christopher C. Joyner (eds.). United Nations Legal Order (2 vols.). Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press/American Society of International Law, 1995. Pp. xxiv, 1119. Index. Book reviewers, it seems, are supposed to feign ignorance of any reviews of the same book by others. But the present reviewer can hardly ignore the glowing review accorded to these volumes by Professor Thomas Franck in the American Journal of International Law (90 AJIL (1996) 519-23). He considers the collection a splendid and `richly satisfying' one, characterizes the twenty-two authors as either `well-known experts' or `newly revealed praetor[s]', and describes individual chapters as remarkable, fascinating, excellent, and so forth. He knows `of no other work as valuable to an understanding of how the global legal system works now'. While this fulsome praise is qualified by a few minor cavils, one might expect an absolutely outstanding collection. Instead, it is merely a solid, informative and reasonably comprehensive one, with many of the shortcomings of such collective volumes. Schachter's introduction is, as usual, a masterly synthetic characterization of the `UN Legal Order'. Sohn's chapter on `The UN System as Authoritative Interpreter of its Law' is much too narrowly drawn and ends up as primarily a vehicle for a case study on the response to apartheid by the principal UN organs. Fleischauer's chapter on `Inducing Compliance', although equipped with the disclaimer that he is writing in his personal capacity, is singularly disappointing. It contains little more than a few observations relating to the Iraq-Kuwait case study, rather than coming to grips with a subject that has given rise to a vast literature in recent years and is of major importance. His chapter ends with the rather tedious reminder that the UN is `not a world government' (p. 238). The absence of strong chapters on these two key issues is a disappointment. In contrast, the chapters by Szasz on `General Law-Making Processes' and Kirgis on `Specialized Law-Making Processes' are masterly surveys of a vast range of disparate material and make important contributions to the literature. Similarly, many of the chapters dealing with relatively narrowly drawn topics are very well done. They include Marks on UNESCO, Kirgis on both shipping and aviation, Tomasevski on health, Dobbert on FAO, Hannum on human rights, Lyall on posts and telecomunications, and Alvarez on finances. Other excellent chapters are by Leary on labour, Martin on refugees, and Cook on women. Several authors are given impossible tasks. In particular, Murphy is expected to deal in one chapter (entitled `Force and Arms') with the use of force, collective security, peace-keeping, regional arrangements, arms control, disarmament, non-proliferation and safeguards. Hardly surprising that he is forced to a conclusion that tells us little: `If the past is prologue, the United Nations will continue to play a vital role in developing the international legal order to restrain the use of force among its member states' (p. 317). While Stepen Zamora does an excellent job on `Economic Relations and Development', his brief is equally impossible, given that it encompasses GATT/WTO, UNCTAD, IMF, the World Bank, UNDP, UNIDO, WIPO, ECOSOC, the General Assembly and much of the UN system's operational activities over the past fifty years. The chapters on self-determination and the international civil service would have been interesting if written and read in the 1980s, but tell us little for the late 1990s. In short, the collection has great strengths and significant weaknesses. It is nonetheless essential reading for those interested in the UN system in general or in international law-making processes more specifically. P.A.
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