Banning the Bomb

5

International Relations Theory and the July 1996 Opinion

A set of diverse responses premised on different theoretical assumptions greeted the rendition of the July 1996 Advisory Opinion. The previous chapters focused at some length on the responses of the individual judges to the Majority Opinion. Besides the jury composing the 1996 advisory bench, academics with an international law background and political scientists also closely evaluated the developments surrounding the legal assessment of nuclear threat or use culminating in the July 1996 Opinion. These responses are surveyed during the course of this chapter.

This chapter begins with a recapitulation of prevailing accounts chronicling the responses of international lawyers in United States ...