New Nuclear Cases at the Hague Court

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has dealt with the problems connected with nuclear weapons already in several cases, both in contentious cases and advisory opinions. The latest cases were instituted at the end of April 2014 when the Republic of the Marshall Islands submitted applications against nine nuclear weapon states, for their alleged failure to fulfil their obligations with respect to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and nuclear disarmament (Obligations concerning Negotiations relating to Cessation of the Nuclear Arms Race and to Nuclear Disarmament cases).The author offers a close analysis of the applications with special regard to the jurisdictional problems and some questions connected with the merits of the cases. The jurisdictional problems are emerging from the fact that from the nine states against which the Marshall Islands instituted proceeding only three are parties to the Court’s optional clause system and the case of the other six states depends on whether these states will accept the Court’s jurisdiction for the cases instituted by the Marshall Islands. As regards the merits of the cases, the outcome of the cases will depend on how the Court will interpret the notion of nuclear disarmament, and whether it will accept that in contemporary international law there exist a customary norm of nuclear disarmament