Lex Mundi Nova

The State of the Law on Nuclear Weapons

In 1996, the International Court of Justice delivered a historic advisory opinion stating that any threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be illegal, but that it could not determine whether such threat or use would be lawful or unlawful “in an extreme circumstance of self-defence” threatening the survival of a state. The court also ruled that states must conduct and bring to a conclusion good-faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. Thirty years later, with some very important exceptions - particularly the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), now signed or ratified by some 100 States - many key global legal and normative constraints on nuclear weapons are being eroded, and some are completely unravelling. Every single bilateral nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia has now been abandoned. The cornerstone of global nuclear disarmament, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is under severe strain: its disarmament obligation is in stasis, and there are fears that some States are poised to exit altogether. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, while representative of a strong norm against nuclear testing, has not yet entered into force. Meanwhile, nuclear dangers have increased, materializing in more aggressive nuclear postures, arsenal modernization, and new delivery systems. These alarming trends are occurring at a time when the international rules-based order and its institutions, created after the Second World War to (in the words of the UN Charter) “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, are themselves 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.