This book provides a detailed legal commentary of the Articles of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which was passed in July 2017. Laying out its scope and the obligations of signatory states, this commentary clarifies the regulations overseeing the complex relationships between signatory states and nuclear weapon states.

• Introduction


• The Development of Nuclear Weapons


• The Use of Nuclear Weapons


• Post-Second World War Nuclear Weapons Development


• The International Legal Regime


• The Humanitarian Initiative


• The Negotiation of the 2017 Treaty


• Commentary


• The Title of the Treaty


• The Preamble


• The Articles of the Treaty


• The Adoption of the Treaty

Stuart Casey-Maslen is Honorary Professor at the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. He has more than 20 years' experience in disarmament and holds a doctorate in the law of armed conflict and master's degrees in forensic ballistics and in international human rights law. He has authored or edited a dozen publications on disarmament law, including commentaries on the 2013 Arms Trade Treaty, the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, and the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, all published by Oxford University Press, and treatises on the regulation of nuclear weapons under international law and of weapons under international human rights law, both published by Cambridge University Press. He was legal adviser to Austria for the negotiation of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in June-July 2017 and legal adviser to Switzerland for the negotiation of the Arms Trade Treaty in 2012-2013.