Within the United Nations, the Security Council occupies a unique role as the only organ that can take a range of legally binding decisions that member states have committed to abide by. At the same time, it is disputed under which conditions Security Council resolutions can be considered legally binding, as was evidenced in March 2024, when a resolution that demanded an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan in the Israel-Palestine war was considered non-legally binding by some Council members and clearly binding by others. In this talk, I contribute to this debate with insights from an empirical analysis of the Council’s practice, using quantitative text analysis on a corpus of all Security Council resolutions adopted between 1946 and 2023. With more than two thousand resolutions adopted, the UNSC has developed a practice of formalistic legal language. Empirically examining all resolutions adopted sheds light on how the institution uses linguistic indicators to generate normative commitment, informing the debate on the binding effect of resolutions.

Hannah Birkenkötter is an assistant professor of international law at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City, Mexico, and an associated researcher at the Chair of Public Law and Jurisprudence, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. She is also a member of the German United Nations Association’s Research Council. Hannah works in public international law with a focus on the United Nations, international legal theory, and the intersection of international and constitutional law. 

This event is sponsored by the University of Chicago Law School's International Programs, Malyi Center for the Study of Institutional and Legal Integrity, and International Law Society.

Lunch will be provided. Please submit dietary requests eight business days prior to the program to Aican Nguyen at aican@uchicago.edu. Although we will try to accommodate dietary needs, it is not guaranteed.