ABSTRACT
The authority of the United Nations Security Council to take action in defense of international peace and security is derived from the UN Charter, a document that has the legal status of a multilateral treaty. Under the prevailing theory of international law-legal positivism-states are obligated to follow the dictates of the Council because they have consented to its authority by signing the Charter.1 Any changes in the scope of this authority must therefore also emanate from explicit state consent. Yet while the Charter technically limits the Security Council’s authority to opposing aggression and responding to threats or breaches of the peace, the Council has rarely acted in this area. Rather, its most effective and significant actions since the 1990s have been in areas that go beyond the powers granted to the Council either by the Charter or by some other means of expressing consent: nation-building (Bosnia, Afghanistan, Somalia, East Timor), prosecuting war crimes (the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone), peacekeeping (57 operations since 1960), dismantling apartheid (South Africa), alleviating serious humanitarian crises (Rwanda, Burundi, East Timor, and Zaire), resolving civil wars (Liberia and Angola) and restoring a democratically elected government (Haiti).
