About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

4 Chi. J. Int'l L. 59 (2003)
Hard Law, Soft Law, and Non-Law in Multilateral Arms Control: Some Compliance Hypotheses

handle is hein.journals/cjil4 and id is 65 raw text is: Hard Law, Soft Law, and Non-Law in Multilateral Arms Control: Some Compliance Hypotheses Richard L. Williamson, Jr.* I. INTRODUCTION Perhaps the single most important issue concerning the role of law in arms control' is whether parties are more likely to comply2 with the fundamental Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law, and Interim Chair, Department of International Studies. JD, Harvard Law School. The author wishes to thank the University of Miami for its financial support, Dapo Akande, Mary Coombs, Bernard Oxman, David Sloss, and Leonard Spector for their helpful comments, and his research assistants Jeffrey Green and Andrea Sasse. The author previously spent two years in the State Department working on European disarmament matters, and six years in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency working on nuclear nonproliferation. No effort is made here to distinguish arms control from disarmament, though distinctions are possible. More significant is to differentiate arms control from two related subjects, viz., from peace treaties and cease-fire agreements containing provisions for demilitarized zones or other arms limitations, and from humanitarian law. The former includes the Rush-Bagot Agreement of 1817 between the US and Britain that restricted the number and weaponry of warships on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain; the 1955 Multilateral Austrian State Treaty, 6 UST 2369 (1955); the 1990 Treaty on the Final Settlement With Respect to Germany, 1696 UNTS 115 (1991); and the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, reprinted in 18 ILM 362 (1979). These agreements are similar to arms control in that they limit the number, armament, and/or location of military forces. But nations often have incentives to comply with peace agreements that differ considerably from the kinds of incentives that may apply to instruments more widely considered arms control. Humanitarian law (jus in bello, generally considered a subset of the laws of war) limits the means and circumstances under which arms can be used, with the clear implication that other uses are proper. Humanitarian law, as its name implies, is largely designed to protect the civilian population and avoid needless suffering among combatants. It forbids the use of some arms entirely or controls the circumstances of their use. Arms control, in contrast, goes beyond use limitations to prohibit manufacturing, testing, transfer, and/or possession of weapons systems, or to constrain their number and location. Its purposes are above all to contribute to international peace by reducing nations' concerns over the number, type, and placement of weapons-particularly those thought to be of strategic significance or otherwise destabilizing-in the hands of other countries. This distinction leaves some gray areas, such as the ban on any use of chemical or biological weapons under the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, 26 UST 571 (1975) (hereinafter Geneva Protocol); the ban on the use of environmental modification techniques under the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most