Book Review: Nuclear Weapons and International Law, Existential Risks of Nuclear War and Deterrence Through a Legal Lense, 2 Volumes, Second Edition, by Charles J. Moxley Jr. (2024)
Abstract:
These are scary times to be thinking and writing about nuclear weapons. For sixty years, I have been engaged in anti-nuclear advocacy based on the application of international law to the phenomenon. As a result of these endeavors, I thought I knew most of what there is to know about nuclear weapons and the law.
It was humbling, therefore, to read Charles Moxley’s blockbuster study of the topic. Based on prodigious research, Moxley has located far more material than I ever recall seeing, not only on the international law sources, but also on domestic law, science on the effects of weapons, risk analysis, and material relating to US policy in the literature and in military manuals. At over a thousand pages and twenty-eight chapters, spilling over two volumes, reading the study cover to cover is a daunting task. Nevertheless, it is very readable.
Moxley’s essential premise, then, is that international law is capable of being applied to the ultimate banishment of nuclear weapons, just as it has been applied to the abolition of other weapons of mass destruction.
Recommended Citation: Roger S. Clark, Book Review: Nuclear Weapons and International Law, Existential Risks of Nuclear War and Deterrence Through a Legal Lense, 2 Volumes, Second Edition, by Charles J. Moxley Jr. (2024), 48 Fordham Int'l L.J. 265 (2024).