Tag: Peter Weiss

IALANA mourns Peter Weiss

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.

Human Rights Versus Nuclear Weapons: New Dimensions

By LCNP
Commentary and Analysis regarding UN Human Rights Committee General Comment no. 36; the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons; Human Rights, Democracy, and Nuclear Weapons

Available as download below

We are witnessing a resurgence of interest in the application of international human rights law to one of the principal threats to the human future: nuclear weapons. A general comment issued by the UN Human Rights Committee in 2018 finds the threat or use of nuclear weapons to be incompatible with respect for the right to life. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons adopted a year earlier is suffused with a humanitarian perspective, protects the rights of victims of testing and use of nuclear arms, and cites human rights law and the principles of humanity in its preamble.

Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP) twice brought together leading lawyers, law professors, and analysts to reflect on these developments, in December 2018 and in May 2019. This publication collects papers based on the speakers’ remarks.

  • Prof. Roger Clark of Rutgers Law, LCNP Executive Director Ariana Smith, LCNP President Emeritus Peter Weiss, and Dr. Daniel Rietiker of the University of Lausanne examine and reflect upon the significance and implications of the finding of the UN Human Rights Committee.
  • Bonnie Docherty of the Harvard Law International Human Rights Clinic addresses human rights aspects of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
  • Andrew Lichterman of Western States Legal Foundation explores how human rights discourse could be a terrain for making connections between disarmament movements and other movements for a more fair, democratic, and ecologically sustainable society.

This publication is highly recommended reading for anyone seeking to understand how a human rights approach can contribute to the abolition of nuclear weapons.

Michael Adams Lecture and Conversation at the United Nations by Peter Weiss

On November 21, LCNP and IALANA President Emeritus Peter Weiss delivered the J. Michael Adams Lecture and Conversation at the United Nations. He covered a range of topics, from decartelization to decolonization to human rights to the illegality of nuclear weapons, and more. In the Q&A, in response to a question from LCNP Board member Jonathan Granoff, he recalled that the 1981 founding of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy was inspired by a paper on international law and nuclear weapons whose lead author was Professor Richard Falk, a member of the LCNP Board. 

A webcast of the event is linked at www.lcnp.org and is at:

http://webtv.un.org/watch/dgc-united-nations-academic-impact-j.-michael-adams-lecture-and-conversation/6106863250001/