The Possibility To Live In A World Without Nuclear Weapons

By Dragana Thibault

Dragana Thibault--Albany Law School LL.M. in International Law, Class of 2020--was born and raised in Macedonia. She received her Bachelor in Laws (LL.B.) in 2014 and Master of Law (LL.M. in Civil Substantive and Procedural Law) in 2016 at the Faculty of Law Iustinuanus Primus. Throughout her Master studies at Iustinuanus Primus, Dragana was supporting classroom activities in Civil Law and Property Law as a Teaching Assistant.
During her time at Albany Law, Dragana worked on a project at the Research Foundation for the State University of New York, as a Research Support Specialist in the area of weapons of mass destruction. Dragana prepared this paper for Professor Bonventre’s International Law of War & Crime Seminar. 

Since the beginning of time, people have been in conflict with each other. The attempt to inflict as much damage on the opponent as possible, in the most cost-effective way, has brought about the creation of weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction, as described by the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, refer to unconventional weapons, such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, which are characterized by the ability to kill and mutilate vast numbers of people, destroying entire cities, and even entire regions.

This paper attempts to determine if there is a possibility to live in a world without weapons of mass destruction, especially focusing on nuclear weapons. The main focus will be placed on the United States and Russia, as they possess the most weapons of mass destruction.
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To read the entire paper, open HERE.

International Law and Nuclear Weapons: An Overview

By Stephen K. Tomaro

Stephen Tomaro is a member of Albany Law School’s class of 2020. Before law school, Stephen graduated from the University of Vermont in 2017 with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.
At Albany Law School, Stephen is interested in Business Law and its impacts in entrepreneurship. He has served two years as Secretary of the Business Law Society. In his second year, Stephen won the 2019 Donna Jo Morse Negotiation Competition. In the fall of his third year, Stephen completed a field placement that focused on the commercialization of innovative technologies at the Research Foundation for the State University of New York.
Stephen prepared this paper for Professor Bonventre’s International Law of War and Crime seminar.


On July 16, 1945, minutes before the first nuclear test in the Los Alamos desert, physicist Enrico Fermi joked, “[n]ow, let's make a bet whether the atmosphere will be set on fire by this test.”  Although before conducting the live test teams of mathematicians and physicists solved that there was a three million to one chance of actually igniting the atmosphere's nitrogen, this was a legitimate concern during the early days of nuclear weapons.

That question alone conveys the immense power that nuclear weapons wield over the planet. Since their first use, the UN, world leaders, scientific communities, and grassroots movements have theorized about how to best police nuclear weapons.

This paper examines the hesitation of the international community to draw bright-line rules regulating nuclear weapons. This review proceeds by examining: the lawlessness of Mutually Assured Destruction, the successes and failures of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, a 1996 Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice, and the 2017 Treaty On The Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
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To read the entire paper, open HERE.