Collective Security Under International Law (International Law Studies)

Washington D.C.: United States Government Printing Office 1957. vi 275 pp. Reprinted 2001 2011.The noted jurist Hans Kelsen advances his theory that collective security is ...an essential function of law national as well as international and that therefore there exists an intrinsic connection between international security and international law; in other terms that collective security of the state is just as collective security of the individual within the state by its very nature a legal problem. Foreword p. ii.Professor Kelsens high standing as a scholar is sufficient to commend in advance any volume that comes from his pen. But in this case he has chosen a subject that will at once challenge attention. The main function of the volume in the words of the author is to show that collective security is an essential function of law that it is by its very nature a legal problem. A generation ago there were many in high places to contest the thesis. Today the bitter lesson of two world wars has established the principle for practical purposes in spite of the difficulty of putting it into practice. But the legal aspects of the thesis remain to be clarified and this is what Professor Kelsen does with all his power of legal analysis and systematic presentation. (...) [We] must be grateful for what we are given an acute analysis of a fundamental principle the applications of which we can make from our own knowledge of recent history. --C. G. Fenwick American Journal of International Law 52 (1958) 811.