The use of nuclear weapons under the doctrine of self-defence

The lawful use of nuclear weapons in self-defence sits in a precarious and fraught position amongst lawyers, states and scholars, primarily due to their indiscriminate destructive nature. The use of nuclear weapons is the biggest threat to peace and security yet they exist under obscurity in International Law. The purpose of this paper is to examine at what point, and under what circumstances, a State is lawfully permitted to use nuclear weapons in self-defence. The right to self-defence is a basic normative right codified in the United Nations Charter (UN Charter). The inherent right to self-defence is the primary justification for the use of nuclear weapons according to the International Court of Justice in the Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons (Advisory Opinion). Even so, nuclear weapons would still have to meet the threshold of self-defence and the cardinal principals of ‘imminence’, ‘necessity’ and ‘proportionality’ which regulate the lawfulness of a state’s actions in self-defence. Since there has only been two situations where nuclear weapons have been used- in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945- it is necessary to examine three hypothetical situations in which nuclear weapons are used in self-defence to determine if, under any, exceptional circumstances such action could be lawful.

Grantor

Department of Public Law

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Laing, Jessica

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Powell, Cathleen

• international law
• nuclear weapons

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/11427/31606

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/31606