Schwebel, Stephen M.

English

Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository

THE YALE LAW JOURNAL
5. Municipal land acquisition should be centralized in a single agency.
6. Federal tax laws should be amended to put owners of income-
producing properties in a more advantageous position.
7. The local tax structure should be be modified to impose a lighter
burden on real estate and to distribute the cost of municipal
services more equitably over the entire metropolitan area.
8. Planning to achieve a rational land use pattern and an effective
traffic circulation system should be undertaken on a metropoli-
tan area-wide basis.
9. Uniform building legislation should be adopted throughout the
metropolitan area.
10. Land should be made available for redevelopment on a lease basis
with an option to purchase.
Despite the broad perspective of these proposals and the fact that they con-
stitute a realistic approach to the problem, if they were put into effect they
would carry us only a short step toward the author's goal. Mightier means
must be found to deflate the balloon of urban land prices. For almost a century
we have countenanced the crowding of more and more people into our cities.
The greater the concentration of population, the higher real estate values have
soared. And the higher prices in turn have fostered greater overcrowding.
Unfortunately, the way out of the vicious cycle is not as easy as Colean's pre-
scription may suggest.
LAWRENCE LIvINGSTON, JR.t
VOTING AND THE HANDLING OF DISPUTES IN THE SECURITY COUNCIL. By
Eduardo Jim~nez de Ar~chaga. New York: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 1950. Pp. 189. $2.00.
THE POLITICAL ROLE OF THE GENERAL ASSEmBLY. By H. Field Haviland,
Jr. New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1951. Pp. 190.
$2.75.
THE significance of international organization as it exists today-its effects
and potentialities-in substantial measure turns upon the work of the two
primary organs of the United Nations, the General Assembly and the Security
Council. These two monographs in the Carnegie Endowment's series of United
Nations Studies are revealing in their analyses of the records of accomplish-
ment and lack of accomplishment of these organs.
Professor Jim6nez de Ar6chaga's approach is keenly legal. He examines
the theory and practice of the veto, the processes of submission of a dispute or
a situation to the Security Council, the Council's exercise of its powers of in-
tCity and Regional Planning Consultant. Member, California Bar.
[Vol. 63
REVIEWS
vestigation, its implementation of methods of peaceful settlement, its application
of measures to avert or end hostilities, and its enforcement action under
Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. His careful and closely reasoned treatment
leaves the reader with three prime impressions: that the Security Council has
in fact made a profoundly important and largely constructive contribution to
the settlement of international disputes and the frustration of aggression, from
Iran in 1946 to Korea today; that it has, in the process, evolved a pattern of
action which is relatively consistent and corporate; and that the barriers to
accomplishment which were raised by the false assumption at San Francisco
of Great Power unity have been significantly eroded by a progressive inter-
pretation of the Council's voting procedures and powers.
Professor Jimdnez does not conceal that his own bias is distinctly construe-
tive. His arguments for narrowing the scope of the veto through interpretation,
and liberally construing the treaty which is the Charter, so as to make it effec-
tive, are cogent, and his consequent demonstration that much can be done with
a constitution short of amendment (if that needed demonstration) is compel-
ling. The Council has moved from regarding abstention by a permanent Mem-
ber as not constituting a veto, to refusal to consider itself paralyzed by the
wilful absence of a permanent Member, to stripping permanent Members of
the power to veto the majority's decision as to what matters are procedural,
and so not subject to the unanimity rule (the so-called "double veto"). Pro-
fessor jimdnez' exposition of these developments is illuminating.
Professor Jim~nez' rigorously legal approach to the work of the Security
Council, however, does not attempt to give a full picture of the operations of
that highly political organ. His book accordingly suffers from a tendency to
equate the talk in the Security Council with the reality outside, to accept the
legal rationales advanced in the Council as the actual reasons motivating the
policies of the Member States. Professor Jimdnez' formalism blunts the edge
of his criticism. His treatment of the Palestine case, for example, does not
adequately convey the faintheartedness and lack of foresight, the failure to
sustain the spirit, if not the letter, of the Charter, which characterized too much
of the Council for too long in its delayed reaction to the Arab attempt, through
armed agression, to prevent partition. Professor Jimtnez' effort to abstract
law in the making from the cases, while hardly commenting upon the cases
themselves, has an effect which is at once dispassionate and a trifle unreal.
One can well read Professor Haviland's study in conjunction with that of
Professor Jimdnez, not only because its political perspicacity is lively, but be-
cause it thoroughly treats the notable shift in power from the Security Council
to the General Assembly-a trend which puts the record of the Council in per-
spective. Professor Haviland considers the origins of the Assembly's political
role, and its development, in detail. He analyzes the Assembly's organization,
voting procedure, techniques of handling disputes, and methods of formulat-
ing and implementing policy, and he succinctly reviews the Assembly's treat-
ment of twenty-two major issues. The thread which runs through his analytical
narrative is that the Assembly has been successfully assuming political powers
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THE YALE LAW JOURNAL
which the Security Council has not been able to wield in a manner satisfactory
to most of the Governments concerned.
Professor Haviland recalls that the Soviet Union, as well as the West, on
occasion has promoted the Assembly's political role. While he assigns the
primary credit to East-West stalemates in the Security Council for the tend-
ency of the Great Powers to desert an organ in which they enjoy the veto for
one in which they do not, he also suggests that they have turned to the plenary
body because they have found the Assembly a useful means for winning the
collaboration of the middle and smaller Powers not regularly represented on
the Council, and because the psychological effect of an Assembly decision in
their favor may be greater. The smaller Powers naturally are inclined to
strengthen the organ in which they exercise far more influence than in the
Security Council. Professor Haviland suggests that another factor in the
growth of the Assembly's political power has been the number and intensity of
the crises with which the Organization has been confronted, but concludes that
"[t] he interests of the great, middle and small powers are likely in any era to
produce this same tendency to move from the narrow to the broader organ as
the central political forum."' Professor Haviland's analysis of the Assembly's
workings is perceptive and his summation of its successes and failures balanced.
Professor Haviland's book was published less than a year after the Assembly
reached the peak of the political development it has so far achieved, with the
adoption of the Acheson "Uniting for Peace" resolution. During the past two
years, the trend away from the Security Council to the Assembly appears to
have been sustained, if not accentuated, but, while the Assembly's power has
thus increased relatively within the Organization, it has not increased abso-
lutely. On the contrary, the implementation of the Acheson plan has been
unimpressive. Perhaps the most hopeful development has been the substantial,
and remarkably unpublicized, adherence of the great majority of Members to
the Assembly's recommendation for an embargo on the shipment of strategic
materials to the Peoples' Republic of China.
Both studies together provide a perspective on United Nations accomplish-
ments and capacities which is far less discouraging than the impression of
United Nations inadequacy which is too widely held.
STEPHEN M. SCHWEBELt
1. HAViLAxD, p. 171.
tAuthor, THE: SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE Uxnim NATIONS (1952); Member of the
Class of 1954, Yale Law School.
(Vol. 63


de Arechaga: Voting and the Handling of Disputes in the Security Council and Haviland Jr.: The Political Role of the General Assembly

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de Arechaga: Voting and the Handling of Disputes in the Security Council and Haviland Jr.: The Political Role of the General Assembly

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