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NILR 2008
enjoy under this instrument. In the nal version adopted, this set of rights was much watered down. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that the status dened in the Refugee Convention did serve as a model. Most likely, it will continue to do so for future amendments to this Directive, and maybe as well for asylum law in domestic jurisdictions as regards the status of complementary protection beneciaries. McAdams book offers valuable materials for that debate.
Hemme Battjes
Assistant Professor in Constitutional and Administrative Law VU University Amsterdam
b. simma, ed., The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary, 2nd edn., Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, 1383 pp., UK 295.
ISBN 0-19-925377-3.
j-p. cot; a. pellet; m. forteau, eds., La Charte des Nations Unies: Com -mentaire article par article, 3rd edn., Economica, Paris 2005, 2251 pp., 125. ISBN 2-7178-5057-0.
doi: 10.1017/S0165070X08001058
The greatest document of its kind that has ever been formulated. This is how US Senator Connally, during the July 1945 Senate debate on the ratication of the Charter, qualied the Charter of the United Nations that was signed a few weeks earlier at the San Francisco Conference.1 The greatest documents of their kind would also be an appropriate qualication for the two books considered in this review, which are widely recognized as the two most authoritative commentaries of the UN Charter. There is a long history of commentaries of the Charter. The Goodrich and Hambro commentary was published in 1946 (second edition published in 1949; third edition with Simons published in 1969). Kelsens 1000-page detailed analysis was offered as a juristic not a political approach to the problems of the United Nations (The Law of the United Nations, 1950, quotation at p. xiii). It took a long time before a new generation of commentaries was born. The rst of this new generation was the rst edition of Cot & Pellets commentary, published in 1985, followed in 1991 by the German commentary edited by Simma (Charta der Vereinten Nationen Kommentar). The German commentary was the basis for the rst edition (1994) of Simmas English language commentary of the Charter. This rst edition was much more than a translation of the 1991 German commentary: the authors updated their contributions and two general pieces were added,...