Description
The relationship between the law and nuclear weapons is often examined not at the national level, but rather internationally, whether in terms of the threat of use such as the International Court of Justice debate in 1996; the The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 1970; or the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted by a vote of 122 States in favour at the United Nations on 7 July 2017. Yet nationally, many countries, nuclear and non-nuclear, have legislation around nuclear weapons. A more recent example of this is North Korea's new nuclear policy law in 2022. This paper offers a first mapping of national legislation around nuclear weapons worldwide, and considers the domestic purposes and drivers for these laws, and whether they fundamentally differ in purposes among nuclear and non-nuclear states.
