UN General Assembly
1962

95. Even a superficial review of what has happened in the United Nations in the past few years would show that part of that process has begun and that a peaceful revolution has been set in motion within the Organization. In illustration of my point, it cannot be denied that the decisions adopted by the Assembly are merely recommendations, devoid of the binding effect which international obligations usually have. Nor can it be denied that the non-mandatory nature of the Assembly's decisions, together with the veto and the principle of domestic jurisdiction, constituted the three pillars on which it was possible to support the San Francisco agreement. But while this is still true from a strictly legal standpoint, it is less obviously true from the standpoint of one particular political consideration. I am referring not merely to the moral force consistently attributed to the Assembly's recommendations as expressions of public opinion and world conscience. I am thinking specifically of the increasingly wide-spread belief, particularly in certain fields of United Nations activity, that these resolutions are mandatory — of the emergence of a psychological factor, the opinio necessitates, which is one of the decisive elements in the development of the rules of customary international law. This, it must be recognized, is a new phenomenon — one not provided for in the system of the Charter. The least we can say now is that this idea already exists; time alone will tell whether it is to be the idea of the future.