Item Detail
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3497
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1
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0
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English
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J. Reuben Clark, Jr., and the United Nations
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BYU Studies
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Spring 1973
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13
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415-25
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"J. Reuben Clark's brief written statements about the United Nations have helped to set the attitudes of many members of the Mormon Church toward the U.N. and have been widely used by some groups to influence others against the United Nations. However natural it is for the political attitudes of a single Mormon leader to influence the attitudes of so many of the Church's members, it is highly unusual that President Clark's attitudes toward the United Nations should have been so pervasive, especially in light of the facts: (1) President Clark himself said very little about the U.N., and prefaced what he did say with a fairly broad and restrictive caveat; (2) the Church has taken no "official" position with respect to the United Nations, and (3) a president of the Church remarked that there was "enough good" in it to justify its existence. President Clark's criticism of the United Nations is philosophical, procedural, and substantive. The philosophical objection which he levels against the United Nations is a very general one based on his assumption that any alliance-creating treaty impairs the sovereignty of the signatory states. Clark's assertion is a very difficult one to prove or disprove, but it can be evaluated both theoretically and empirically. One can find theorists of international law on both sides of this question and it would be of little value to recite the evidences here. While each treaty must be looked at independently, it is generally accepted that there is a difference between the self-limitation of sovereignty between equals through the medium of a treaty and the alienation of sovereignty or the transfer of actual decision-making authority to a third party. A trade agreement between states to limit the importation of a specific good is a limitation of sovereignty but not an alienation of it. To transfer to a third party the power to set and enforce import limits is an alienation of sovereignty." [Publisher's abstract]