ABSTRACT
Article 2(1) of the Charter of the United Nations (26 June 1945) states among other things that the organization is based on the principle of the ‘sovereign equality’ of all its members. The principle is quoted often enough in the rhetoric of international politics, but its substantial content has always been controversial. As Edwin DeWitt Dickinson already noted in relation to the League of Nations, factual inequalities amongst member states indicate:
… a deeply rooted conviction that the world cannot be organized on the basis of political equality as political equality has been traditionally understood.
