August 1945

Nuclear Weapons, the International Court of Justice, and the Proposed International Criminal Court Introduction One of the great ironies of history is that nuclear weapons were used on Japanese cities on August 6 and August 9, 1945, while between these bombings — on August 8, 1945 — representatives of the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, and France met in London to sign the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) that would try Axis war criminals. Since the Axis powers had not developed nor used nuclear weapons, the issue of their legality was never placed before the IMT at Nuremberg. It would take almost 51 years from the first use of a nuclear weapon at Hiroshima for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue an opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The first resolution adopted by the newly established United Nations General Assembly,...

IntroductionOne of the great ironies of history is that nuclear weapons were used on Japanese cities on August 6 and August 9, 1945, while between these bombings — on August 8, 1945 — representatives of the United States, Russia, United Kingdom, and France met in London to sign the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) that would try Axis war criminals. Since the Axis powers had not developed nor used nuclear weapons, the issue of their legality was never placed before the IMT at Nuremberg. It would take almost 51 years from the first use of a nuclear weapon at Hiroshima for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue an opinion on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons. The first resolution adopted by the newly established United Nations General Assembly, on January 24, 1946, called for the creation of an Atomic Energy Commission that...