Peter Weiss, 1925 – 2025
IALANA mourns the passing of Peter Weiss on 3 November 2025. Peter was a co-founder of the US-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy in 1981, and then in 1988 became the founding President of IALANA. He remained active in IALANA as President and then President Emeritus in ensuing decades.
A distinguished international and human rights lawyer, Peter played a key role in IALANA’s work. Notably, he was the principal author of a model brief governments drew upon in making arguments to the International Court of Justice on the illegality of threat and use of nuclear arms in proceedings leading up to the Court’s 1996 nuclear weapons advisory opinion. Peter led the non-governmental team at the hearings, and served as an expert on the Malaysian delegation. He subsequently authored assessments of the opinion in Arms Control Today, Iowa Journal of Transnational Law, and American Journal of International Law.
Peter also was part of a non-governmental team that drafted the 1997 Model Nuclear Weapons Convention. Intended to inform negotiations for a multilateral agreement on the verified global elimination of nuclear arms, it became an official UN document and was cited as a useful guide by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other high UN officials. Peter explained the significance of the model convention in the Fordham International Law Journal in an article entitled “Taking the Law Seriously: The Imperative Need for a Nuclear Weapons Convention.”
Peter made major contributions as well to causes other than nuclear disarmament, in particular the defense of human rights, as can be seen in this obituary. He had friends and admirers around the world, as is evident in a collection of tributes created on the occasion of his 2013 retirement as President of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy. We will miss his intellect, wit, passion for justice and peace, and warmth.
