The International Progress Organization has today published a comprehensive evaluation of the role of the United Nations Security Council in the field of international criminal justice. Volume XXXII of the Studies in International Relations -- The Security Council as Administrator of Justice? Reflections on the Antagonistic Relationship between Power and Law by Hans Köchler -- addresses the question of the compatibility of international power politics with the requirements of international criminal justice, and whether criminal law can at all be an instrument of enforcement for measures of collective security under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.

The chapters of the book deal, inter alia, with problems concerning the legality of ad hoc international tribunals; the Security Council's influence on the exercise of jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court; and the Council's legal and practical incompetence as a "terrorism court." The study identifies the absence of a global balance of power as one of the key factors of the arrogation of judicial and legislative powers by the Security Council, and warns of a profound delegitimization of international criminal law. The book specifically analyzes the lack of authority for the creation of the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and describes the complex legal problems related to the referral of the situation in Darfur (Sudan) to the International Criminal Court.