Expert Roundtable

The Status of Nuclear Weapons Under International Law

Event Description

Join PILPG on November 4 from 12 pm to 1 pm EDT for a conversation with experts on the status of using or threatening to use nuclear weapons under international law.

The legal status of nuclear weapons under international law, including public international law and international humanitarian law, is highly controversial. While the International Court of Justice attempted to provide some clarity on the question in its Advisory Opinion in 1996, the question ultimately remains unanswered. During this roundtable, PILPG will engage legal experts to assess the current status of nuclear weapons under international law and how it could be prosecuted under the existing criminal law framework, particularly, whether it could be classified as the crime of aggression, war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. PILPG Managing Director Professor Milena Sterio will moderate the roundtable.

This event is part of the PILPG Thought Leadership Initiative. The Initiative focuses on prominent international law and international affairs topics and organizes monthly expert roundtables to share expertise and reflections from our work on peace negotiations, post-conflict constitution drafting, and atrocity crimes prosecution.

Event recording (EN)

Event recording (UKR)

Speakers

**Mr. Hryhoriy Plachkov**

Mr Hryhoriy Plachkov is the former Head of State Nuclear Regulation Inspection of Ukraine (2017-2021). Since 2004, he worked at PJSC «Kyivenergo", SE "National Energy Company "Ukrenergo", SE "Energoremont", LLC "DTEK" and, since 2016, as the Head of the Department of the Nuclear-Industrial Complex, Director of the Department of Nuclear Energy and the Nuclear-Industrial Complex of the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry of Ukraine. Previously, he worked as the Head of the Department of Strategic Policy and Prospective Development of the Fuel and Energy Complex of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy of Ukraine and Deputy Director of Investments and Prospective Development of SE "National Atomic Energy Generating Company "Energoatom.

**Lieutenant Colonel Jay Jackson**

Lt Col Jay Jackson serves as Individual Mobilization Augmentee to the Staff Judge Advocate at United States Strategic Command, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. He is responsible for providing legal advice to the commander and joint staff on all aspects of the command's global mission, planning, and training.

Lt Col Jackson received a direct commission as a judge advocate in September 2006 and served on active duty until June 2020, when he transferred to the Air Force Reserve. He spent his last three years of active duty as Deputy Staff Judge Advocate at Joint Special Operations Command, deploying five times as the senior legal advisor of a special operations joint task force.

Lt Col Jackson lives in Omaha, Nebraska, where he serves in the national public finance department of Kutak Rock LLP. He and his wife, Nichole, have three sons: Knox, Sullivan, and Henry.

**Professor David A. Koplow**

Professor Koplow specializes in the areas of public international law and national security law. He joined the Georgetown Law faculty in 1981. His principal courses have been International Law I (the introductory survey of public international law topics), a seminar in the area of arms control, non-proliferation and terrorism, and the pro-seminar for LLM students in national security law. In addition, he has directed a clinic, the Center for Applied Legal Studies, in which students provide pro bono representation to refugees who seek asylum in the United States because of persecution in their homelands. His government service has included stints as Special Counsel for Arms Control to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense (2009-2011); as Deputy General Counsel for International Affairs at the Department of Defense (1997-1999); and as Attorney-Advisor and Special Assistant to the Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1978-1981). He is a graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School and a Rhodes Scholar. Most of his scholarly writing concentrates on the intersection between international law and U.S. constitutional law, especially in the areas of arms control and national security and treaty negotiation and implementation.

MODERATOR

Milena Sterio is the Managing Director of PILPG and the Charles R. Emrick Jr. - Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at Cleveland State University’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She is a leading expert on international law, international criminal law and human rights. Sterio leads PILPG’s Thought Leadership Initiative.

Sterio is one of six permanent editors of the prestigious IntLawGrrls blog, and a frequent contributor to the blog focused on international law, policy and practice. In the spring of 2013, Sterio was selected as a Fulbright Scholar, spending the semester in Baku, Azerbaijan, at Baku State University. While in Baku, she had the opportunity to teach and conduct research on secession issues under international law related to the province of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh. Serving as a maritime piracy law expert, she has participated in meetings of the United Nations Contact Group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia as well as in the work of the United Nations Global Counterterrorism Forum. Sterio has also assisted piracy prosecutions in Mauritius, Kenya and the Seychelles Islands. Sterio is a graduate of Cornell Law School and the University of Paris I, and was an associate in the New York City firm of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton before joining the ranks of academia full time. She has published seven books and numerous law review articles. Her latest book, “The Syrian Conflict’s Impact on International Law,” (co-authored with Paul Williams and Michael Scharf) was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.