Peter Weiss (contact)

President, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

Peter Weiss is Vice-President, former President, of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms and its US affiliate, the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy; and Vice-President, Center for Constitutional Rights. Mr. Weiss is a graduate of Yale Law School and has lectured and written widely on the international law of war and peace, nuclear weapons and human rights. He was the principal author of the draft brief on the illegality of threat or use of nuclear weapons used by many countries in making written submissions to the International Court of Justice in the 1996 nuclear weapons advisory opinion, and served as counsel to Malaysia at the hearings. He has published several articles on the ICJ opinion, including in the fall 1997 issue of Transnational Law and Contemporary Problems. Mr. Weiss is also a leading human rights lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, and litigated the seminal case establishing the right of victims of torture to sue their torturers in US courts (Filartiga v. Pena-Irala). Since his retirement in 1996 from Weiss Dawid Fross Zelnick & Lehrman, a leading trademark firm, he has been Senior Intellectual Property Counsel to The Chanel Company Limited. He is also a founder and former President of the American Committee on Africa and former Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. He has also long been an activist for peace in the Middle East and is currently a member of the Arab-Jewish Peace Group in New York and of the Executive Committee of Americans for Peace Now, which supports the Peace Now movement in Israel.

Saul Mendlovitz (contact)

Vice-President, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

Saul Mendlovitz is Dag Hammarskjold Professor of Peace and World Order Studies at the Rutgers University School of Law and Co-Director of the World Order Models Project (WOMP). He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Arms Control Association, a former consultant for the Social Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Vice-President of the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy, and represents four organizations at the U.N.: the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), the Lawyers’ Committee on Nuclear Policy (LCNP), the International Peace Research Association (IPRA), and the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF). He has written extensively on security matters and issues relevant to promoting a just world order. His most recent publications include: Preferred Futures for the United Nations; "The Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" and; "Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons: a Narrative of Affirmative and Judge Weeremantry’s Grotian Quest." Prof. Mendlovitz along with Randall Forsberg, Director of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies and Ambassador Jonathan Dean, are U.S. members of an international consortium who are promoting a world-wide project, Global Action to Prevent War.

Elizabeth Shafer (contact)

Vice-President, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

Elizabeth J. Shafer, J.D., has been a Vice President of the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy since 2008, and served as a Board Member from 1994--2007. She was a Drafter of the 1997 Model Nuclear Weapons Convention. She has written papers on various nuclear subjects: "Nuclear Development and Civil Liberties: International Implications" (1981) ; "Recommendations Toward an International Consensus for Radioactive Waste Disposal, for a Nuclear Weapons Convention"(1996); "Effects and Cause: Mens Rea, or Knowledge of the Effects of Nuclear Weapons as a Factor of Individual Criminal Responsibility in the Statute for the International Criminal Court"(1998); "Circling Beasts: The Exigency of Abolishing Nuclear Weapons; the Convergence of Pragmatism and International Humanitarian Law" (1999) ; "Catch-2000: Heller's Complex Humor" (2000); "Nuclear Risks: Necessity and Illegality" (2005).

She is the author of "Good Faith Negotiation, the Nuclear Disarmament Obligation of Article VI of the NPT, and Return to the International Court of Justice", a paper she first presented at a 2006 IALANA conference in 2006, and which was subsequently published as one of four articles in Legal Obligation to Nuclear Disarmament? (IALANA 2009). She is a graduate of the City University of New York Law School at Queens College. She has served on the Board of Hudsonia, a regional environmental research and advocacy group, and is currently serving on the Saugerties Conservation Advisory Commission. She is also very concerned about and involved in human rights issues: as a member of the Bar Association of New York City, she served in its Community Outreach Program to Assist Haitian Refugees, in its Elderlaw Clinic, and on its International Human Rights Committee. She has also done pro bono work for Center for Constititutional Rights on its project on government accountability for the torture of detainees at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

Charles J. Moxley, Jr. (contact)

Treasurer, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

Charles J. Moxley, Jr., is the author of Nuclear Weapons and International Law in the Post Cold War World (Austin & Winfield 2000) and numerous law review and other articles on the subject, and an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School teaching nuclear weapons law. He is a practicing attorney in New York City, specializing in commercial, securities, and insurance litigation, and spends much of his professional time as an arbitrator and mediator. He is a Fellow of the College of Commercial Arbitrators and of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators and Chair Elect of the Dispute Resolution Section of the New York State Bar Association.

Staff Member Bios

John Burroughs (contact)

Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy
Director, UN Office of International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms

John Burroughs, J.D., Ph.D., is a specialist on treaty regimes and international law relating to nuclear and other non-conventional weapons. He represents LCNP in Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review proceedings, the United Nations, and other international forums. In 1998, Dr. Burroughs represented LCNP at the negotiations on the International Criminal Court in Rome, and in 1995, he was the nongovernmental legal coordinator at the hearings on nuclear weapons before the International Court of Justice.

Dr. Burroughs is co-editor and contributor, Nuclear Disorder or Cooperative Security? U.S. Weapons of Terror, the Global Proliferation Crisis, and Paths to Peace (2007) (available here); co-editor and contributor, Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An Assessment of U.S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties (2003); and author of The Legality of Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons: A Guide to the Historic Opinion of the International Court of Justice (1998). He has additionally published articles and op-eds in journals and newspapers including the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the World Policy Journal, and Newsday. Dr. Burroughs also is an adjunct professor of international law at Rutgers Law School, Newark. He has a J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. from Harvard University.

Alyn Ware (contact)

International Coordinator, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy
Recipient of the Right Livelihood Award

A national of Aotearoa-New Zealand, Alyn has worked for years promoting peace and the planetary interest. As Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee, he was a key figure in the World Court Project, a board member of the NGO Committee on Disarmament, a steering committee member of the Middle Powers Initiative, Pacific Representative for the International Peace Bureau, executive committee member of Peace Movement Aotearoa (PMA), and a steering committee member of the International Abolition 2000 Movement.

Alyn's publishing history is no less impressive. Among his credits is co-authorship of the Nuclear Weapons Convention. Alyn has also traveled widely and spoken before numerous conferences.

Before coming to the LCNP, Alyn worked in Aotearoa-New Zealand as a Kindergarten teacher and peace activist-organizer. He initiated the Mobile Peace Van Society, Waikato Campus Peace Group, Youth Peace Network, Our Planet in Every Classroom, Peace Walk for a Nuclear Free New Zealand, and War Toy Amnesty.