International Decisions: Obligations Concerning Negotiations Relating to Cessation of the Nuclear Arms Race and to Nuclear Disarmament

Abstract

In a trio of decisions, the International Court of Justice rejected the applications in which the Republic of the Marshall Islands claimed that three large states known to possess nuclear weapons, India, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom, had breached their international obligations to undertake and conclude negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament. This essay discusses those decisions, as well as the United Kingdom's subsequent limitation of the circumstances under which it will accept the ICJ's jurisdiction over such complaints. This development, coupled with the Court's own narrowing of circumstances in which such an application will be accepted, make the likelihood of an eventual ruling on the nuclear disarmament issue quite remote.

Keywords: International Court of Justice, Nonproliferation Treaty, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear Disarmament, State Responsibility, International Law, International Litigation, Treaties, Treaty Negotiation

JEL Classification: k33