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There are some cases in which ‗shall‘ is overused and for sake of clarity it could be substituted by the present tense. In the following example retrieved from SCRIraq1 the use of ‗shall‘ simply over-emphases the sense of obligation which is already fully expressed by the verb ‗to bind‘:

(66) 21. […] this requirement shall be binding on a properly constituted, internationally recognized, representative government of Iraq and any successor thereto […].

(S/RES/1546 (2004))

Redundancy in these cases is used to give even more strength to the obligation.

It is sometimes possible to find ‗shall‘ used to provide intertextual references rather than imposing any kind of obligation, as in example (67), in which reference to another provision is being quoted:

(67) 3. Decides that, for the purposes of this resolution, references in resolution 1360 (2001) to the 150-day period established by that resolution shall be interpreted to refer to the 180-150-day period established pursuant to paragraph 1 above […].(S/RES/1447 (2002))

These cases could probably be avoided, by substituting ‗shall‘ with other forms such as the present tense, but they are retained probably because they are part of legal tradition and style.

Moreover, in general legal language, a reason of misuse of ‗shall‘ is due to the belief that deontic ‗must‘ and ‗shall‘ are interchangeable. ―Clearly, there will often be in practice a considerable degree of semantic overlap between the two but they cannot be deemed as being identical in meaning‖

(Williams 2005: 208).

In legal discourse a distinction is commonly made between commands and requirements:

‗shall‘ denotes mandatory intent, in which non-compliance is punishable by sanctions or renders the

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instrument or procedure invalid (Šarčević 2000: 138), while generally ‗must‘ has the function of establishing requirements or conditions.

The following examples from Tiersma (1999) illustrate the correct use of ‗shall‘ and ‗must‘

according to this rule:

(68) The Vendor shall ensure that the delivery fulfills all prevailing requirements.

Payment must take place on due date.

The difference between ‗must‘ and ‗shall‘ can also be explained through aktionsart, which is the inherent semantic property of a word: ‗shall‘ is used in non-stative active forms, while ‗must‘ contains statives, because requirements or conditions are statements about what people or things must ‗be‘

rather than what they must ‗do‘. This can be seen in the following examples retrieved from SCRIraq1:

(69) Stressing the right of the Iraqi people freely to determine their own political future and control their own natural resources, welcoming the commitment of all parties concerned to support the creation of an environment in which they may do so as soon as possible, and expressing resolve that the day when Iraqis govern themselves must come quickly […]. (S/RES/1483 (2003))

(70) 3. Decides that, in order to begin to comply with its disarmament obligations, in addition to submitting the required biannual declarations, the Government of Iraq shall provide to UNMOVIC, the IAEA, and the Council, not later than 30 days from the date of this resolution, a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration of all aspects of its programmes to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles […]. (S/RES/1441 (2002))

However, there is a case in the corpus in which the choice of ‗shall‘ would have probably been better than ‗must‘. If ‗shall‘ denotes a mandatory intent, in which non-compliance is punishable by sanctions (Šarčević 2000: 138), while ‗must‘ establishes requirements or conditions, the use of ‗must‘ in one clause of the Iraq corpus seems to clash with some contextual aspects related to the second Gulf conflict.

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As a matter of fact, on May 22, 2003, and thus after the official termination of the major combat operations in Iraq, the Security Council resolution issued S/RES/1483 (2003), containing the following clause, in which ‗must‘ was used:

(71) 11. Reaffirms that Iraq must meet its disarmament obligations, encourages the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America to keep the Council informed of their activities in this regard, and underlines the intention of the Council to revisit the mandates of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency as set forth in resolutions 687 (1991) of 3 April 1991,

1284 (1999) of 17 December 1999, and 1441 (2002) of 8 November 2002 […].

(S/RES/1483 (2003))

Clearly, ‗shall‘ and ‗must‘ have a certain degree of semantic overlap, and it could also be that ‗must‘ is here used in the general sense of obligation, as it is used in general English.

However, the clause is part of a legal text, and thus the modal is expected to be used according to legal usage. If this is the case, it would be interesting to understand why a ‗must‘ of requirement is used instead of ‗shall‘ of obligation here, although non-compliance of disarmament had been one of the reasons for which Iraq was punished with war. Probably a stronger ‗shall‘ would have been more adapt in this occurrence.

The issue could also be explained as a new tendency in legal language. For instance according to Williams (2007: 124-125) the overuse of ‗shall‘ in legal texts is impairing its strength because:

[…] shall is used so abundantly and ‗promiscuously‘ in legal texts and it is even used sometimes in subordinate clauses where it has no prescriptive force. […] must tends to be preserved for cases where expressing strong mandatory obligation or urgent necessity. Thus, because must is used relatively sparingly in most legal texts, it may sometimes be used to convey this idea of enhanced obligation with respect to shall which, in turn, tends to be used to convey enhanced obligation with respect to the present simple.

However, in the case of example (71) above, it is impossible to know whether the ‗use of ‗must can be explained on the basis of Williams‘ observations or if it is to be considered a misuse. Its interpretation really depends on the text producer.

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Therefore, ‗shall‘ continues to have a wide application in legal and diplomatic texts used in SCRIraq1 to express obligations, permissions, requirements and performatives in constitutive clauses.

Its flavour of futurity makes it a valuable passe-partout in this type of texts; however, this form can often give rise to vagueness, misuses and thus questionable interpretations of the modal.