Book ReviewSpoken Dialogue Technology: Toward the Conversational User Interface Michael F. McTear (University of Ulster) London: Springer-Verlag, 2004, x+432 pp; paperbound, ISBN 1-85233-672-2, $59.95

While the sanctions regimes of the United Nations have been much discussed in recent years, in particular after the judgments of the Court of First Instance of the European Union in the cases involving Mr. Kadi and Mr. Yusuf, those sanctions regimes have been subjected to very little analysis in the legal literature,1 and much less still have pleas to install some form of control over the Security Council and its Sanctions Committees been made on the basis on reasoned normative theory. Farrall’s fine recent study does both: it is both an in-depth overview of the work of the sanctions committees to date, and a careful (somewhat “tiptoeing”) foray into jurisprudence. Therewith, Farrall’s study immediately positions itself as the leading study on the topic. Perhaps the most useful aspect of the book is that Farrell systematically goes through the work of all the sanctions committees established by the Security Council to date, starting with Southern Rhodesia and ending with Iran. Indeed, he does so in two ways: in the main body of text, the approach is a cross-cutting analysis, whereas in a lengthy annex, the sanctions committees are discussed in chronological order. The book therewith becomes an extremely useful tool for further research: Farrall’s painstaking, diligent