This article is in memory of Joseph Schwartzberg, author of Transforming the United Nations System: Designs for a Workable World, who died on 19 September 2018. Transforming the United Nations System: Designs for a Workable World There have been a number of periods when proposals for new or different United Nations structures were proposed. The first period was in 1944-1945 when the United Nations Charter was being drafted. Some who had lived through the decline and then death of the League of Nations wanted a stronger world institution able to move more quickly and effectively in times of crisis or at the start of an armed conflict. In practice, the League of Nations was reincarnated in 1945 in the U.N. Charter, but the names of some of the bodies were changed and some new Specialized Agencies such as UNESCO were added. However, there was some dissatisfaction during the San Francisco negotiations and an article, 109, was added indicating that 10 years after the coming into force of the Charter, a proposal to hold a U.N. Charter Review Conference would be placed on the agenda – thus for 1955. The possibility of a U.N. Charter Review Conference led in the 1953-1954 period to a host of proposals for changes in the U.N. structures, for a greater role for international law, for a standing U.N. “police force”. Nearly all these proposals would have required modifications of the U.N. Charter. In the United States, the Senate created a Subcommittee on Review of the U.N. Charter which held hearings for two years. The Subcommittee created a precedent by traveling all over the country to get local views. Its testimonies filled two thousand pages of the printed record. I have them as a bound book, and it is interesting to read the views expressed at the...

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