460 J.-A. PEMBERTON
The British group maintained that ‘in a world where the truth’
had become ‘dangerously collective,’ it was necessary to ‘enfranchise
as far as possible the individual savant and to give him the occasion to
express himself personally’ in the meetings ‘outside of any “national”
framework.’^113
Based on a similar concern to avoid politicising the work of the con-
ference, Scelle and Lazare Kopelmanas, both of whom represented The
Hague Academy of International Law, told the meeting that the topic
of security was the ‘worst topic’ at that time for the conference to study
since it was a ‘political question in full evolution’. They maintained that
in regard to this issue, the national committees could bring to the con-
ference nothing but the national points of view which had already been
aired in the various international political bodies. Further, according
to Scelle and Kopelmanas, it would be futile to debate the topic of the
United Nations Security Council as the conference could do nothing to
affect what was key to the Council’s operations: the ‘opposition, balance
or unanimity of the Big Five, Four...or...even the Big Two,’ this being
essentially a political matter. Scelle and Kopelmanas suggested that the
conference could make a valuable contribution if it were to assemble ‘a
number of social facts‘ based on an investigation of what the Charter of
the United Nations calls the ‘[p]rotection of the rights of man, liberty,
economic life and full employment.’^114
As another alternative to the topic of the United Nations Security
Council, the French delegation proposed that the conference study the
impact of world organisation on national sovereignty, with a view to
persuading the public to accept the restrictions on sovereignty entailed
by formation of the United Nations. In this context, Maurice Pernot
pointed to the strict limits on sovereign rights resulting from the ‘intro-
duction of certain controls on armaments, such as the production of
atomic energy’; by the new regime concerning colonies and trustee-
ships; by the need to protect the essential human rights of and ensure
‘respect for the human person against the excesses of State power’; and
(^113) Politique Étrangère 12, no. 2 (1947), 243.
(^114) International Studies Conference, Verbatim report of the XIIIth Administrative ses-
sion, December 16 and 17, 1946, at the Centre d’études de politique étrangère de Paris,
IICI-K-XIV-12, UA, 92–3, 102.