Lex Mundi Nova
The Legal Framework for a World Beyond Nuclear Weapons
“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.
–Antonio Gramsci
The IJC Opinion
Twenty-nine years after the International Court of Justice (ICJ)'s historic advisory opinion on the legality of nuclear weapons use—or threat of use—global laws and norms constraining the nuclear weapons complex are frozen, decaying, even unravelling. Meanwhile, nuclear dangers have increased, materializing in more aggressive nuclear postures, arsenal modernization, and new delivery systems. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)'s disarmament obligation is in stasis, the treaty less stable than ever, with fears that some States are poised to exit altogether. These alarming trends are occurring at a time when the international consensus around the rules-based order created after the Second World War is itself at risk of coming apart.
Lex Mundi Nova aims to reaffirm and strengthen international law as a bulwark against rising nuclear dangers and the erosion of norms and taboos against nuclear weapons. We will ultimately seek a new ICJ ruling on the illegality of nuclear weapons, with no exceptions or loopholes, preventing their normalization and legitimization.
The Initiative
While there has been little or no progress in developing significant legal frameworks to constrain nuclear weapons since the 1996 ICJ opinion, there has been an explosion of new international laws and norms regarding protection of the environment, human rights, public health, and future generations, all of which could be used to further delegitimize and stigmatize nuclear weapons and to constrain nuclear states’ behavior. Currently, however, such laws and norms are not being used this way.
Since 2024, we’ve consulted 90+ interdisciplinary experts from 70 institutions and have generated half a dozen potential ICJ advisory opinion questions. We’ve built a network of scholars, think tanks, international court practitioners, lawyers, and diplomats interested in executing a campaign to return to the ICJ.
The process towards the ICJ advisory opinion—including the public hearings—will attract significant public interest, presenting an opportunity to sensitize not only the general public but a new generation of lawyers, scholars, and activists to the imperative to eliminate nuclear weapons threats.