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Since the adoption of the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction in December 2002 a radical overhaul of US and international preventive nuclear non-proliferation policy has occurred. This paper argues that policy measures have yielded the legalization of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. Under US leadership, the UN Security Council has been endowed with the role of a legislating and adjudicating third-party mechanism sanctioning non-compliance with core norms of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). An operational law-enforcement and policing mechanism to interdict suspicious trade was created and international law amended to criminalize proliferation-related trading or smuggling. On this background, the paper conceptually discusses legitimation strategies ideal-typically predominant in hegemonic versus imperial social orders and evaluates what strategies have predominated with the Bush administration during the adoption and implementation of two policy innovations addressing the supply-side of proliferation: the Proliferation Security Initiative of 2003 and UN Security Council Resolution 1540 (2004). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]