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Book ReviewsDelbrück, Jost (ed.), Allocation of Law Enforcement Authority in
the International System. Proceedings of an International Symposium of
the Kiel Institute of International Law. March 23-25, 1994. Berlin: Duncker
& Humblot, 1995. Pp. 198. The very topic of this Kiel Symposium presupposes a `from the top to the
bottom' view of international law - a centralized international law
distributing enforcement competences rather than a weak international order
built by consensual arrangements and customs. In such a view of the
international system, the United Nations embodies the `organized world
community'. The contributions to this volume accordingly focus on the law of
the UN Charter, its `allocation' of competences among the Security Council
(Chapter VII), `regional arrangements' (Chapter VIII) and collective
self-defence (Art. 51). Professor Paul Szasz advocates a strong Security
Council, without the limiting effects of checks and balances being imposed by a
body such as an International Court of Justice reviewing its decisions.
Professor Fred Morrison sees regional organizations as `significant actors',
but supports the Security Council remaining in charge of military
interventions. In contrast, Professor Klaus Dicke believes in the larger
capacities of regional organizations. In a thoughtful article, Professor
Torsten Stein analyses the role of the state in such a system as being between
an agent of the system as decentralized law enforcer and a self-interested
defender of individual interests. Professor Delbrück argues - in a way
which he himself refers to as reaching `the borderline between sober analysis
and "imaginative' daydreaming"'- that `global threats to the survival of "Space
Ship Earth"' were transforming international law into `World Internal Law
(Weltinnenrecht)'. Not surprisingly, not all of the participants at the
Symposium, escpecially those from the United States, shared his optimism. As
Professor Mary Ellen O'Connell put it: `[T]he ability or the chance of having a
truly progressive, community-oriented response to violations of the most
important rule of international law, Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter, has not
changed as much for states as might have been, at one time, hoped.' Andreas L. Paulus Harvard Law School
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