The Caroline's Legacy

• Author: Craig Forcese
• Pages: 243-249

243

Chapter 31

The Caroline’s Legacy

The hell with international law. It’s ju a series of precedents and decisions

that have been made in the pa. But this is a unie situation and this is

one in which one can, and should, make international law rather than ju

follow pa precedents.

— dean aCheson, us seCretary of state,

durinG the CuBan Missile Crisis (1962)1

T   mattered, but how it has mattered may be

disputed. Webster’s 175-year-old formula has managed the

difficult feat of constructive ambiguity. In modern inter-

national law, it has been imagined and reimagined to corral states

and their uses of force. These constraints disproportionately af‌fect

more powerful states inclined to use military power.2 But, still, both

in its vocabulary and its practical ef‌fect, the Caroline formula has not

been so constraining a standard as to truly cage use of force in inter-

national relations.

Opinions will divide on whether this has been a good thing or

not. The outsized function played by self-defence and the Caroline

in international relations ref‌lects the unsatisfactory role played by

an often-paralyzed UN Nations Security Council in performing its

responsibilities of ensuring international peace and security. The

Caroline f‌illed a vacuum, as self-defence took centre stage in regu-

lating war and peace.3 Stephen Nef‌f bemoans the consequence in his

magisterial treatise on war and law: “Self-defence claims blossomed

so luxuriantly, and expanded in so many directions as ef‌fectively to

encompass any arguably justif‌iable resort to force.”4