Nuclear weapons inevitably engage the learning, the passion, and the energy of actors in multiple disciplines. These appalling arms raise profound problems that are, in turn, political, military, economic, diplomatic, humanitarian, and moral in character. But too often, the legal dimensions are overlooked; the world community has declined or failed to recognize and resolve foundational questions about the conformity with international law of nuclear weapons, nuclear deterrence, and nuclear strategy. So the puzzle lingers: what if the entire nuclear enterprise were per se illegal?

That is the challenge that Charles J. Moxley, Jr. addresses in his capacious new two volume treatise, Nuclear Weapons and International Law. In this Herculean work, Moxley assembles a careful lawyer’s brief for the illegality proposition, arguing that the threat and use of nuclear weapons would be, in all circumstances, violative of fundamental standards under international law. He positions his thesis not simply as advocacy for some future comprehensive universal treaty to abolish nuclear weapons, but even more audaciously in support of the proposition that even without new international agreements, the corpus of existing international law—appropriately understood and applied to this most extreme case—already suffices to render nuclear weapons beyond the pale.

Continue Reading “Review of Charles J. Moxley, Jr., Nuclear Weapons and International Law: Existential Risks of Nuclear War and Deterrence Through a Legal Lens, Second Edition“