unilaterally

[ yoo-nuh-lat-er-uh-lee ]

adverb

1. involving, done by, or decided by only one person, side, party, or faction:

   Instead of bargaining with teachers and public service workers, the governor and the legislature have unilaterally reduced pension and health benefits.

Word History and Origins

Origin of unilaterally¹

unilateral ( def ) + -ly

Example Sentences

The president can’t kill a federal department unilaterally.

From Los Angeles Times

Israel unilaterally annexed the Golan in 1981.

From BBC

The move was not recognised internationally, although the US did so unilaterally in 2019.

From BBC

Richard Nixon unilaterally and secretly launched the invasion of Cambodia in 1970, and Ronald Reagan created a secret Central American foreign policy, while arranging the unauthorized transfer of funds and weaponry to the Nicaraguan rebels, the Contras, from the sale of U.S. arms to Iran, despite the fact that such funding was prohibited by an act of Congress, the Boland Amendment.

From Salon

One week after the attacks of 9/11, Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which undermined its own power in Article I of the Constitution to declare war and weakened its powers of restraint on presidential actions carefully articulated in the 1973 War Powers Resolution, passed to guard against the very kind of secretive engagement in war that Nixon had unilaterally authorized in the Vietnam era.

From Salon