From Covenant to Charter: A Legacy Squandered?

White, Nigel

Abstract

The “Covenant” embodied the idea of a contract for peace in 1919. The “Charter” of 1945 appeared more boldly to embody a world constitution for peace. This article analyses the United Nations and its predecessor organisation, the League of Nations, to demon-strate how each organisation was primarily a product of the conflict that preceded it and how each captured the post-war status quo. Despite this shared backward-looking aspect, both treaties were sufficiently broad to accommodate significant constitution-al developments with the potential to shape the collective security systems to meet changing geopolitical conditions. Members of the League failed to seize this opportu-nity but the promise of an improved collective security system, moreover one based on fundamental laws, offered by the drafters of the Charter, is found to be problematic. The transference of competence from member states to organisation that marked the transition from League to UN, which, when combined with the legalisation of hierar-chy by the Charter, have meant that the UN order, despite appearing to be more obvi-ously constitutionalised, was potentially less able to achieve peace through law than its predecessor.

Citation

White, N. (2020). From Covenant to Charter: A Legacy Squandered?. International Community Law Review, 22(3-4), 310-330. https://doi.org/10.1163/18719732-12341432

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 4, 2020
• Publication Date: Aug 20, 2020
• Deposit Date: Oct 21, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 22, 2020
• Journal: International Community Law Review
• Print ISSN: 1871-9740
• Electronic ISSN: 1871-9732
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 22
• Issue: 3-4
• Pages: 310-330
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/18719732-12341432
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4981698
• Publisher URL: https://brill.com/view/journals/iclr/22/3-4/article-p310_4.xml