Nuclear Weapons Law

Shows how international law is central to ensuring the world's safety from the threat or use of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Weapons under International Law is a comprehensive treatment of nuclear weapons under key international law regimes. It critically reviews international law governing nuclear weapons with regard to the inter-state use of force, international humanitarian law, human rights law, disarmament law, and environmental law, and discusses where relevant the International Court of Justice's 1996 Advisory Opinion. Unique in its approach, it draws upon contributions from expert legal scholars and international law practitioners who have worked with conventional and non-conventional arms control and disarmament issues. As a result, this book embraces academic consideration of legal questions within the context of broader political debates about the status of nuclear weapons under international law.

A most comprehensive book, first published in 1999, analysing the ICJ Advisory Opinions on nuclear weapons handed down in 1996.

When German physicists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman first split the uranium atom in 1938, they might have little imagined the potential power their experiments had unleashed. Since the United States successfully detonated the first atomic weapons in 1945, the entire world has lived in fear of annihilation. Technological advances in weaponry and, importantly, their delivery systems have only heightened the sense of dread. Yet, since the end of World War II, world governments have been unable to agree on a strategy for nuclear disarmament. This led first to the Cold War and ultimately to the proliferation of nuclear weapons throughout the world. This work examines the nuclear question within the framework of international law. The advent of the nuclear age and its impact on postwar peace and law is first covered. This is followed by analyses of the initial United Nations disarmament initiatives and the reasons they were doomed from the start. The globalization of the Cold War, the expansion of the nuclear arms race, and the START treaties and the legacy of 1970s-era detente efforts in the years leading up to the end of the Cold War are then detailed. How the United Nations reacted to the end of the Cold War and the prospects for disarmament in the 21st century are the subjects of the concluding section.

This fifth volume in the book series on Nuclear Non-Proliferation in International Law focuses on various legal aspects regarding nuclear security and nuclear deterrence. The series on Nuclear Non-Proliferation in International Law provides scholarly research articles with critical commentaries on relevant treaty law, best practice and legal developments, thus offering an academic analysis and information on practical legal and diplomatic developments both globally and regionally. It sets a basis for further constructive discourse at both national and international levels. Jonathan L. Black-Branch is Dean of Law and Professor of International and Comparative Law at the University of Manitoba in Canada; a Bencher of the Law Society of Manitoba; JP and Barrister (England & Wales); Barrister & Solicitor (Manitoba); and Chair of the International Law Association (ILA) Committee on Nuclear Weapons, Non-Proliferation & Contemporary International Law. Dieter Fleck is Former Director International Agreements & Policy, Federal Ministry of Defence, Germany; Member of the Advisory Board of the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL); and Rapporteur of the International Law Association (ILA) Committee on Nuclear Weapons, Non-Proliferation & Contemporary International Law.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2017) sets out to challenge deterrence policies and military defence doctrines, taking a humanitarian approach intended to disrupt the nuclear status quo. States with nuclear weapons oppose its very existence, neither participating in its development nor adopting its final text. Civil society groups seem determined, however, to stigmatize and delegitimize nuclear weapons towards their abolition. This book analyzes how the Treaty influences the international security architecture, examining legal, institutional and diplomatic implications of the Treaty and exploring its real and potential impact for both states acceding to the Treaty and those opposing it. It concludes with practical recommendations for international lawyers and policymakers regarding non-proliferation and disarmament matters, ultimately noting that nuclear weapons threaten peace, and everyone should have the right to nuclear peace and freedom from nuclear fear.