The controversy relates to the Security Council's place in the UN and in the world. Given the Council's composition and working methods, its monopolization of UN resources and the public attention focused on the Council is problematic. The dominant role of the permanent five, the secrecy of the Council's procedures, the lack of a clearly delimited competence and the absence of what might be called a legal culture within the Council hardly justify enthusiasm about its increased role in world affairs. But the principles and purposes of the Charter are many, ambiguous and conflicting. The purposes and principles are no less indeterminate than the concept of a threat to peace.
Textual constraint is practically non-existent.
Inasmuch as each organ is the judge of its own competence, procedural constraint seems scarcely more significant. For better or for worse, what the Council says is the law. From the lawyer's perspective the realist response clearly misses the point. Authority is a normative and not a factual category. A nagging doubt remains, however.