Nuclear weapons and international criminal law

The main goal of this paper is to research the position of nuclear weapons, i.e. their use and threat, under international criminal law. In that sense, the author, after introductory remarks on some of the most relevant technical issues regarding nuclear weapons, as well as a brief overview of the stance of international law in general towards this kind of weapons, focuses on what he calls two levels of possible reaction of international criminal law in relation to them. The first level of reaction, which could be labeled as a more general one, encompasses all the cases in which core international crimes could be committed by the means of nuclear weapons - as such, the legal status of nuclear weapons is essentially not different from the status of any other means (e.g. conventional weapons) through which these crimes could be perpetrated. On the other hand, the second level of possible reaction is the one which would deem the very use of nuclear weapons as a crime per se, regardless of the concrete effects of that use. This second level is still only in the domain of de lege ferenda. The author concludes that this is unlikely to effectively change in the near future, once again pointing out at the ultima ratio character of criminal law - it is the last resort of legal reaction to unlawful behavior and, on the other hand, when it comes to nuclear weapons, the situation is that they are still not absolutely and universally prohibited even by some other branches of law, more "lenient" branches of law, in the first place international humanitarian law.