Legitimacy and Effectiveness of UN Security Council in Today’s International Society.

United Nations promptness and adequacy to maintain international peace and security (UN Charter, Article 1) is a controversial issue, in XXI century much more than before, when UN was being created and the Cold War went on setting a compulsory balance grounded on mutual deterrence between two superpowers at the time. Since geopolitics fully changed from 1945, first through decolonization and a new economic international order; then, the fall of the Berlin wall, the clash of USSR, Yugoslavia and the globalization; finally, 9/11 attacks to USA and the spread of massive threats all over the world, like terrorism and a severe economic and financial crisis that, joined to huge migration flows, are shaping international assets at present. Deep concern is on UN Security Council (SC) legitimacy, its action being performed on a representative basis not existing any more, nonetheless supported by shifting States coalitions. Articles 2 and 24 of UN Charter, and Chapter VII overall are rightly enforced according to some local customary rules developed by UN Charter implementation, while SC reform is debated again from 2015 so far. Its legitimacy is not seriously contended as far as it concerns UN rule of law, since its deliberative acts usually do not face opposition, thus assessing institutional effectiveness, whilst its outdated decision-making mechanism restates deep inequality in representation system. A gap is apparent between SC decision-making process and legal acts implementation according to UN Charter rule of law, but both share a very low level of democratic choice. SC resolutions based on UN Chapter VII are thus legitimate and they make the rule of law operative, since UN norms and SC decisions are consistent. UN provisions on SC composition and decision-making process - the right to veto - are clearly not up to date, but whenever UN missions failed it was never up to SC legal inefficiency, as veto can lawfully restrain SC political engine. If rule of law is observed, the right to veto restates SC defeat in governing any crisis, thus disclosing its substantial inefficiency whether detached from its Permanent Members’ political support. SC legitimacy can be disputed under its composition, too narrow if compared to current international society and too much selected according to Permanent Members’ powerful right to veto. If SC voting procedure does not give an evidence of a strong political approach to each controversial situation at stake, it’s not only its legitimacy to be questioned, but effectiveness of its action. From early 1990’s, SC started to work by a new energy unknown before, because of the Cold War, adopting many resolutions every year, thus bearing its responsibility. General Assembly plays a crucial role to boost its political agenda, while International Organizations locally based do it at implementation level of SC decisions. Thus, international law actors still debate on law and legitimacy of UN SC, but so far its effectiveness turns out to be a political issue following legal acts themselves, while democracy is certainly denied by existing voting method, thus interfering with its legitimacy.