Saving Succeeding Generations from the Scourge of War

Book excerpt: In its famous first words, the UN Charter expresses the determination of “the peoples of the United Nations [...] to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind”. In order to achieve this, a new world organization was established, with a key responsibility for the Security Council. The aim of this book is to evaluate the functioning of the Security Council during its first 75 years, from an institutional legal perspective. It analyzes three issues that were not only hotly debated when the United Nations was founded, but have also been highly relevant for the Council’s functioning in practice and are likely to remain so in the future: the right of veto for the permanent members, the rule of law, and the size of the Council (the need for enlargement).