Building Pragmatic Utopias: The "Other" Security Council, International Law and the United Nations Dream

(Introduction) Achieving perpetual peace is the biggest utopia ever conceived by mankind. The United Nations is the modern institution charged with the task of realizing such utopia: essentially, a world without war. Accordingly, Article 24 of the UN Charter establishes the Security Council as the institution in charge of maintaining international peace and security. However, the Security Council is often portrayed as a Leviathan: an institution above the law, unwieldy, biased and tremendously powerful. Yet seventy years after the creation of the United Nations, it is still up and running, and largely supported by member states.