Does it matter that the UN is ending the Libya mandate?

Reuters’ UN correspondent, Louis Charbonneau, is reporting that the Security Council today will end the authorization it gave for outsiders to use military force in Libya:

The U.N. Security Council plans on Thursday to end its authorization for a 7-month-old NATO military operation in Libya that led to the ouster and death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The plan to cancel the mandate comes despite a request from Libya’s interim government for the Security Council to wait until the National Transitional Council makes a decision on whether it wants NATO to help it secure its borders.

The 15-nation council will meet at 10:00 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) to vote on a British-drafted resolution, obtained by Reuters, that would terminate the U.N. mandate which set the no-fly zone over Libya and permitted foreign military forces to use "all necessary measures" to protect Libyan civilians.

This is an important symbolic step, and it puts an exclamation point on NATO’s own decision to wrap up Libya operations. But at a legal level, there’s less here than meets the eye. As a sovereign government, Libya’s new authorities do not now need Security Council authorization to seek outside military assistance. Authorization was needed in the first place because there was no sovereign authority in Libya requesting intervention. So if a band of Qaddafi supporters forms next month, Libya’s new authorities would be completely within their rights to seek outside military support in crushing it. Whether NATO wants to provide that support is, of course, a separate question. But it’s a political question, not a legal one.