This chapter focuses specifically on the Council’s contribution to the international law on the use of force (the jus ad bellum), an area of international law that is central to the Security Council’s role in the maintenance of international peace and security and the collective security system of the United Nations. The chapter addresses, first, the general state of the rules of international law on the use of force (the jus ad bellum). It then outlines the rules themselves. This is followed by sections relating directly to the Security Council: the prohibition of the use of force; the use of force by or authorized by the Council; the Council and the right of self-defence; and the Council and ‘humanitarian intervention’ and ‘responsibility to protect’.

This chapter explores the normative background for the Weimar Republic’s demise, paying particular attention to the shortcomings in the Weimar Constitution (governance by presidential emergency decrees, based on Article 48; and the absence of a constitutional court with clear competencies for judicial review) that abetted democracy’s collapse. We closely examine the controversy in fall 1932 over whether the president, as the “guardian of the constitution,” was ex officio beyond judicial control, as Carl Schmitt claimed, or if such a viewpoint contradicted the spirit of the democratic Weimar Constitution as Hans Kelsen claimed. Kelsen’s critique of Schmitt’s views on the normative position of the president’s normative position and powers in late 1932 was one of the last forceful theoretical defenses of Weimar democracy.