Emergency Powers of the UN Security Council

Abstract

Chapter 4 applies the proportionality model to two cases of IO exceptionalism at the United Nations (UN) Security Council. First, it explains the normalization of the Council’s self-asserted emergency power to act as a global legislator. After 9/11, the Council, for the first time, decreed abstract, general, and indefinite rules to the entire international community. Despite opposition in the aftermath, it was capable to arrogate a permanent de facto legislative competence by credibly justifying the measures as necessary. Second, the chapter accounts for the constitutional containment of the Council’s regime of targeted sanctions against terror suspects. Through Resolution 1390 (2002), the UN Security Council implemented the so-called “terror lists” financially sanctioning all listed individuals without providing for a legal remedy. Against the preferences of the most powerful states, a coalition of societal actors and courts successfully induced procedural improvements by delegitimizing the measures as excessive.