Story: Constitution

The decisions of international judicial bodies place limits on the powers of national governments. This 1995 cartoon by Laurence Clark is about New Zealand's actions in the International Court of Justice (referred to here as the World Court) with respect to nuclear testing and nuclear weapons. In 1995 New Zealand and Australia took a case to the court after France resumed nuclear testing in the Pacific Ocean. The case was rejected by the court on technical grounds, but France stopped testing earlier than planned and closed the test site due to international pressure which the court action had helped to build. The cartoon references the early 17th-century novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, which features a famous scene where the main character jousts with windmills. This has come to be synonymous with the notion of fighting a losing battle.