Abstract

The Need for Decision: Morality Must Rule

Just as the laws of a country are effective only when the majority of citizens choose to be law-abiding, so international law, to be effective, must express the intention of at least some governments to act justly, whatever other may do. It might have been supposed that the legality of using certain kinds of weapons or of experimenting with them in a way to contaminate international waters and the world's atmosphere was a matter that could rightly be considered by the International Court of Justice. The Secretary General of the International Law Association, W. Harvey Moore, in a speech made to the forty-sixth conference of the International Law Association in Edinburgh, Scotland on August, 1954, declared, "nuclear weapons are contrary to international law because, first, nuclear weapons are poisonous, and only barbarians poison their enemies, second, nuclear weapons are inhuman as causing unnecessary suffering."