Written Statement of the Government of the United States (on the legality of nuclear weapons)

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This statement to the International Court of Justice describes the United States government’s response, in June 1995, to the question: “Is the threat or use of nuclear weapons in any circumstance permitted under international law?”

The American officials’ position, in short, was that the ICJ should decline to give an opinion on the matter, as they found the question to be overly vague and that any opinion the ICJ could provide would be “unhelpful.” The American stance on the issue of international legality is stated as:

In the view of the United States, there is no general prohibition in conventional or customary international law on the threat or use of nuclear weapons. On the contrary, numerous agreements regulating the possession or use of nuclear weapons and other state practice demonstrate that their threat or use is not deemed to be generally unlawful.

Moreover, nothing in the body of international humanitarian law of armed conflict indicates that nuclear weapons are prohibited per se. As in the case of other weapons, the legality of use depends on the conformity of the particular use with the rules applicable to such weapons. This would, in turn, depend on factors that can only be guessed at, including the characteristics of the particular weapon used and its effects, the military requirements for the destruction of the target in question and the magnitude of the risk to civilians. Judicial speculation about hypothetical future circumstances on a matter of such fundamental importance would, in our view, be inappropriate.

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Document entry started by Alex Wellerstein on May 17, 2018. Entry last updated by Mikael Kelly on October 13, 2018.