Let Justice be Done though the Heavens Fall - Content Analysis of the International Security Framing in the International Court of Justice

Sammanfattning: Nuclear weapons, a well-researched area in both IR and PIL, but are often researched separately. The objective was to fill the research gap by combining the fields to examine international nuclear security. The Nuclear Opinion made by the ICJ was chosen due to its intersection between the fields, thus the judges’ statements constituted the data. The research question was: how is international security framed by the judges of ICJ regarding nuclear weapons? The statements were analyzed through qualitative content analysis alongside the deployment of framing theory, which analyses how decision-makers define and construct issues by using frames. The results of the study showed that the judges framed it differently. On the one hand, the declarations framed the judicial restrains to be the cause of the nuclear issue and left the responsibility to states, which they framed as international security, rather than stating non-existing laws. On the other hand, the dissenting and separate opinions framed the Court’s incorrect judgment and its Conclusion as contributing to international insecurity. The security was framed as to judge correctly and not to challenge the use of force in IR. In sum, the legal reasoning was affected by international politics because nuclear weapons are in the intersection between IR and PIL.