The Nuremberg Trial and the International Law of the Future

Abstract

Among the most controversial features of the Nuremberg Trial have been the repeated efforts of the Allied Powers to prove that the law created by the London Agreement and the Charter of the International Military Tribunal attached to this Agreement was but declaratory of already existing rules of general international law, and that the verdict of the Tribunal, apart from its immediate purpose of retribution, must be considered as the first attempt in history to establish a legal precedent destined to act as a powerful deterrent against possible future resort to illegal war. The Final Report on the Nuremberg Trial, submitted by the American Representative to the President of the United States, reiterates these dominant ideas by declaring: “The four nations, through their prosecutors and through their representatives on the Tribunal, have enunciated standards of conduct … by which the Germans have been condemned” and which “will become the condemnation of any nation that is faithless to them.” Moreover, this document emphasizes what is termed “the power of the precedent” by asserting that “no one can hereafter deny or fail to know that the principles on which the Nazi leaders are adjudged to forfeit their lives constitute law—and law with a sanction.”