Exploring My Doubt, Reason, and Faith in a Reforming UN Charter
It's Wednesday morning and I am looking at my journey of doubt, reason, and faith through weekly time as having three main components: a Sunday beginning; a Monday-through-Friday middle; and a Saturday ending. The Sunday beginning is my doubt, reason, and faith in Jesus. The Monday-through-Friday middle is my doubt, reason, and faith in a reforming UN Charter. The Saturday ending is my doubt, reason, and faith in Zionism. Accompanying these three, I can firmly perceive a fourth dimension of doubt, reason, and faith with respect to my rule of life - the unique code of conduct, the particular personal vocation, through which the Holy Spirit is calling me to make my weekly journey. And so, this blog now has four simple labels: Sunday, Politics, Shabbat, and Rule.
In one sense, we are all together on the Monday-through-Friday journey of UN confidence. In another sense, some of us are rocketing up the peak of UN confidence "Mount Stupid," some of us are plummeting into the UN confidence "Valley of Despair," some of us are gradually and systematically ascending the UN confidence "Slope of Enlightenment," and some of us have perhaps reached the UN confidence "Plateau of Sustainability." I suspect that I myself am somewhere in the lower third on the UN confidence Slope of Enlightenment.
I can further divide those here with me in the UN Charter reform community on the lower third of the Slope of Enlightenment into enlightened government beginners, enlightened profit-making beginners, enlightened civil society beginners, and enlightened individual capacity beginners (cf. UNRIC Library & Info Point Backgrounder: Civil Society). We are all on the way to becoming enlightened UN reform intermediates and ultimately, God willing, UN reform experts (of whom a subset will become eminent experts).
I am clearly writing and thinking in my individual capacity. How can I further break down the field of enlightened beginners in their individual capacity in the field of UN Charter reform? Well, I don't want to give in to ageism. I can, therefore, well imagine certain high school and undergraduate prodigies who might fit within this category. Others, like me, will be older and have graduate degrees. But perhaps most of those who make it to the enlightened intermediate level of UN Charter reform confidence and competence will be doctoral students or have doctoral degrees.
How much can I grow in my UN Charter reform competence and confidence without a doctoral degree? Well, I have just re-read the UN Charter Preamble and Chapter I, and I am inclined on this basis to estimate that there is much room for growth for me without a doctoral degree, but I will surely want to seek out enlightenment from those with doctoral degrees who have applied themselves to the strengths and drawbacks of these texts. What should be conserved in the UN Charter, and what added or subtracted, by 2045? What is a healthy range of beginning enlightened opinion on this?
Following my usual methodology, I begin by exploring "UN Charter" on Amazon, and it looks like the path forward in this domain boils down to two books. The first book is Charter of the United Nations: Together with Scholarly Commentaries and Essential Historical Documents (Basic Documents in World Politics) from Yale University Press by editors Ian Shapiro and Joseph Lampert. It was published in 2014 and is available for $20.00 on Kindle. Here is the description:
This volume contains the full text of the United Nations Charter and the Statute of the International Court of Justice, as well as related historical documents. They are accompanied by ten original essays on the Charter and its legacy by distinguished scholars and former high-level UN officials. The commentaries illuminate the early and ongoing roles of the United Nations in responding to international crises, debates about the UN’s architecture and its reform, and its role in global governance, climate change, peacekeeping, and development. A concise and accessible introduction to the UN for students, this collection also offers important new scholarship that will be of interest to experts.
The first of the ten essays is titled "The UN Charter: A Global Constitution?" My initial short answer is yes and no, and maybe surprisingly more yes than no. What enlightenment does international relations scholar Michael Doyle have to share on the topic? (Cf. Michael W. Doyle | Political Science; Michael W. Doyle | Wikipedia). I'll need to get the book to find out.
This is an important general starting point, but it is not the same as a deep dive into an article-by-article review of the UN Charter reform discussion. For that we need a journal, a wiki, a long public comment period, and some powerful AI. In the meantime, it looks like the 4th edition of The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary is the indispensable reference volume. Edited by Bruno Simma, Daniel Erasmus-Khan, Georg Nolte and Andreas Paulus, the text was published in 2024 by Oxford University Press and costs $645.00 on Kindle. From the description:
The commentary remains the authoritative, article-by-article account of the legislative history, interpretation, and practical application of each and every Charter provision. Written by a team of distinguished scholars and practitioners, this book combines academic research with the insights of practice. It is an indispensable tool of reference for all those interested in the United Nations and its legal significance for the world community. The Commentary will be crucial in combining solid legal foundations with new directions for the development of international law and the United Nations in the twenty-first century.
There are no reviews of the fourth edition on Amazon, but the Wikipedia entry on German jurist Bruno Simma (an ICJ judge from 2003-2012) relates the following:
Among his approximately 120 publications, Simma is widely known as the editor of the authoritative The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary (Oxford University Press, 1994, 2nd and 3rd editions published in 2002 and 2012), over 2600 pages in its 3rd edition. Simma's treatise is considered "the primary English reference book" on the UN Charter, in particular for international law questions.
I will need to save up for this, but maybe I can afford to buy it in September at the start of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly, in harmony with the Secretary-General's UN80 Initiative. It would be well more than double the price of the most expensive book I have every purchased. Your will be done, Heavenly Father.