Many thanks to Erika de Wet, Marko Milanović, and Matthew Happold, who took the time to read Disobeying the Security Council and write such carefully considered criticisms of what are indeed the central arguments in the book. In what follows I try to respond to some of these criticisms and comments, mainly be reiterating points made in the book, but also trying to take some of them further. Erika de Wet notes, in her review, that the relevant arguments put forward in the book are not ‘watertight’ and require further motivation. No argument there (excuse the pun)—I doubt that any argument (of mine?) could ever be watertight. What I sought to do in Disobeying the Security Council was to offer an interpretation of state practice in response to legally problematic Security Council sanctions, and to legally qualify the admittedly rare instances of principled disobedience of such sanctions that are perceived by states as being wrongful. In that, the book does not really seek to advance a normative argument (‘this is how things should look’) but rather to offer…
EJIL Book Discussion
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Some Remarks on Disobeying the Security Council
Matthew Happold is Professor of Public International Law at the University of Luxembourg. I greatly enjoyed Dr Tzanakopoulos’ Disobeying the Security Council. The book displays a richness of argument backed by a depth of research. At point after point, I found myself in agreement with the author. Yet, sympathetic though I am to his…
A Comment on Disobeying the Security Council
Antonios Tzanakopoulos has written a powerful book in Disobeying the Security Council. It is a rich – at times very rich – piece of scholarship, covering a range of complex issues. The book makes two important arguments (and at that ones I agree with!). First (a point of course already made before), that it is states themselves which are the…
Debating Disobeying the Security Council – is it a matter of ‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’?
Erika de Wet is Co-Director and Professor of International Law, Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa, University of Pretoria (South Africa); Professor of International Constitutional Law, University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands). The author’s critique is based on views developed in Chapters 4 and 10 of her monograph entitled The Chapter VII Powers of the United Nations Security Council…
An Overview of Disobeying the Security Council
I. Introduction Disobedience of an illegal or unjust command has long been a source of inspiration and scholarly excitement for lawyers, philosophers, and even dramatists, among many others. One of the best known tragedies of Sophocles, Antigone, sees the heroine defy the edict of Creon, the ruler of Thebes, in order to comply with the superior (in her view) rule…