Nuremberg Military Tribunals Research Articles

Contextual Vulnerability Should Guide Fair Subject Selection in Xenotransplantation Clinical Trials

Contextual Vulnerability Should Guide Fair Subject Selection in Xenotransplantation Clinical Trials

The Nuremberg Trials Public Communications Apparatus

Abstract If the Nuremberg Trials represent the birth of international criminal law (ICL), then the public relations efforts of their personnel represent the birth of ‘communication in international criminal justice’. This aspect of the Allied post-World War II prosecutions of Nazi war criminals has been hitherto underexplored in the literature. This article fills the gap by examining the origins and development of American efforts to give an account of the Nuremberg Trials while they were unfolding and in their immediate aftermath. It begins with the public relations (PR) efforts of Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the initial International Military Tribunal (IMT) trial of the major Nazi war criminals, and his PR ‘right hand man’, Gordon Dean. Jackson and Dean took a multi-prong approach to messaging about the IMT, seeking to educate their Allied partners about the strategic advantages of a due-process-oriented proceeding, while persuading the American political establishment about the nascent Cold War-positioning advantages of such a justice strategy, as well as disabusing the global citizenry of the ‘victors’ justice’ narrative in favour of a ‘global rule of law’ mythology. Once the IMT trial was concluded, and confrontational US-Soviet bipolar reality became entrenched, American personnel for the subsequent Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT) trials took a different tact. In terms of outreach efforts, PR now focused on German attitudes toward prosecution efforts: NMT staff used appeals to justice in a heroic effort to keep resources flowing and the trial timelines open-ended. Bureaucratically, the PR apparatus eventually flowed to the creation of a ‘Special Projects Branch’, which sought to present the public with key excerpts from the NMT trials and provide various German prosecutors’ offices with transcripts and evidence for potential future trials. From its inception, therefore, ICL’s embryonic PR-sphere served as a battleground for competing concerns of transnational justice versus global realpolitik. Between those diametrically opposed policy poles, it carved out a space for education efforts vis-à-vis the local population, preservation of the historical record, and creation of a nascent bureaucratic structure for PR efforts. These modest achievements would lay the groundwork for the modern development of the field of communication in international criminal justice.

ПРАВОВОЕ НАСЛЕДИЕ НЮРНБЕРГСКОГО ТРИБУНАЛА: ИСТОРИЧЕСКИЙ АСПЕКТ

The main principles and norms of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal are described. 
 Their importance for the development of international law and cooperation of states in the prevention 
 of military conflicts is shown.

Holding Domestic Judges Accountable under International Criminal Law – A Useful Step to Foster the International Rule of Law?

This article explores, whether domestic judges might be held accountable under international criminal law (ICL). To date, international criminal justice has almost entirely focused on prosecuting political or military leaders. The Justice Case tried before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in 1946 marks the most prominent exception. Prior to it, the judiciary – otherwise considered the epitome of justice – had mutated into a murderous machinery under Nazi rule. Judicial decisions do have far-reaching implications possibly constituting or contributing to international crimes. This holds true in a wide range of cases, for instance on practices of warfare and torture, on the use of certain weapon technologies, or on policies relating to minorities or racial segregation. I argue that domestic judges are accountable when engaging in international crimes. The article delves into technical aspects of criminal law; as well as the notions of judicial independence and immunity. While guaranteeing the rule of law, these two notions challenge the core idea of ICL: its equal application vis-a-vis all perpetrators of international crimes irrespective of official capacity. In order to differentiate due judicial conduct and its abuse in violation of ICL, I suggest a threshold a judicial act needs to exceed for entailing accountability for an international crime.

INTERNATIONAL CRIMES WITHIN THE JURISDICTION OF INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURTS AND TRIBUNALS

Although in international law responsibility traditionally had belonged to states, along with involvement of individuals in conflicts between states and committing by them crimes on a massive scale, a need to criminalize such acts and to bring offenders guilty of the most serious violations of international law to justice - arose. Establishment of international criminal courts resulted from the need to fulfill internationally the idea of justice. Development of international criminal courts reflects differences in inter alia attitude towards ratione materiae of particular courts and tribunals. The purpose of this article is to present and discuss international crimes within the jurisdiction of international criminal courts and tribunals. A typology of international criminal courts was indicated and the most important courts and tribunals were presented in detail. The paper discusses subject jurisdiction of International Military Court in Nuremberg and International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokio, the first international courts established to bring war criminals to justice; as well as the subject jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, the only permanent court in international criminal court system, having universal jurisdiction. Four categories of the most serious crimes of international concern were considered, and doubts concerning subject jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, as well as its functioning in general, were signalized.

LACONIA ORDER” AND THE RESPONSIBILITY OF ADMIRAL DÖNITZ BEFORE THE NUREMBERG MILITARY TRIBUNAL

The article concerns the theme related to the order of 17 September 1942 issued by Admiral Karl Dönitz, Commander-in Chief of the German submarine fleet during the World War II. In the German literature this order is known as the Laconia Befehl. It was issued in connection with the rescue operation after the sinking of the British ship ‘Laconia’, which was commenced by the crew of a German submarine. Not only weighty military and ethical, but also legal nature issues appear against the background, since in connection with the order issued Admiral Dönitz was charged before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal for war crimes.

The Nature of Leadership in the Crime of Aggression: The ICC’s New Concern?

Since the Nuremberg trials, it has been accepted that only the highest echelon of state leadership can be responsible for the crime of aggression. The crime of aggression is distinguished from other core crimes under the International Criminal Court’s (icc) purview by, inter alia, its leadership nature. According to Articles 8bis(1) and 25(3bis) of the Rome Statute, only a person ‘in a position effectively to exercise control over or direct the political or military action of a State’ can be held responsible for aggression. The ‘control or direct’ standard was adopted at the first Review Conference of the Rome Statute in Kampala in 2010 and differs from the customary counterpart (‘shape or influence’) established by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal (nmt). This article will explore how the leadership clause has evolved and whether the new standard is more appropriate for the icc.

The Law in Nazi Germany: Ideology, Opportunism, and the Perversion of Justice. Edited by Alan E. Steinweis and Robert D. Rachlin.New York: Berghahn Books, 2013. Pp. x+246. $85.00 (cloth); $85.00 (e-book).Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals: Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography. Edited by Kim C. Priemel and Alexa Stiller. War and Genocide, volume 16. Edited by Omer Bartov and A.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook Reviews. Edited by Alan E. Steinweis and Robert D. Rachlin.New York: Berghahn Books, 2013. Pp. x+246. $85.00 (cloth); $85.00 (e-book). The Law in Nazi Germany: Ideology, Opportunism, and the Perversion of Justice. Edited by Alan E. Steinweis and Robert D. Rachlin.New York: Berghahn Books, 2013. Pp. x+246. $85.00 (cloth); $85.00 (e-book). Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals: Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography. Edited by Kim C. Priemel and Alexa Stiller. War and Genocide, volume 16. Edited by Omer Bartov and A. Dirk Moses.New York: Berghahn Books, 2013. Pp. xii+321. $95.00 (cloth); $95.00 (e-book).Warren RosenblumWarren RosenblumWebster University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 88, Number 1March 2016 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/684905 Views: 294Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Применение международного обычая как источника ответственности за преступление агрессии

This article examines the sources of law relating to the liability for the crime of aggression. Currently, international treaties make the main sources of responsibility for the international crimes. However, we should not neglect customary international law, which is the major source of public international law. The role of the customary international law in the development of international law has always been dominant. In accordance with customary international law the main international Conventions were adopted on the maintenance of peace and security. These international treaties are the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, the Kellogg — Briand Pact of 1928; also the London conference of 1933, and the Nuremberg military Tribunal. Resultant was the definition of aggression laid down in the Resolution 3314 (XXIX) of the United Nations General Assembly on 14th December 1974. The International Court of Justice relies on said Resolution. However, the customary international law must be further developed since the crime of aggression can be committed by non-military methods.

Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals: Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives and Historiography, ed. Kim C. Priemel and Alexa Stiller

Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals: Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives and Historiography, ed. Kim C. Priemel and Alexa Stiller

Duress: From Nuremberg to the International Criminal Court, Finding the Balance Between Justification and Excuse

AbstractArticle 31(1)(d)1of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC Statute) presents an important opportunity to reconsider the defence of duress in cases of unlawful killing. While the case ofErdemovićhas done much to substantiate the existence of the defence of duress at international law it appears to have curtailed the doctrine by interpreting it with reference to a strict form of proportionality characteristic of duress as justification. On the other hand, duress as excuse requires some measure of proportionality. This article will contend that the hybrid approach of Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMTs), defined duress and the moral choice test primarily by reference toculpa in causa, not resorting to duress, and a ‘softer’ proportionality and in doing so, provided a more flexible and workable model for duress. Article 31(1)(d) of the ICC Statute, although an interesting attempt to find the balance between duress as excuse and justification, is a missed opportunity to redefine the defence in international criminal law. An alternative test for duress, with reference to the principles that emerged from the jurisprudence of the NMTs, is required in order to find the correct balance between duress as excuse and justification.

Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals: Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography, edited by Kim C. Priemel and Alexa Stiller (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), xii + 321 pp., hardcover $120.00, paperback $34.95, electronic version available

Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals: Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography, edited by Kim C. Priemel and Alexa Stiller (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012), xii + 321 pp., hardcover $120.00, paperback $34.95, electronic version available

Kim C. Priemel / Alexa Stiller (Eds.), Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography. (Studies on War and Genocide.) New York/Oxford, Berghahn 2012

Article Kim C. Priemel / Alexa Stiller (Eds.), Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography. (Studies on War and Genocide.) New York/Oxford, Berghahn 2012 was published on April 25, 2014 in the journal Historische Zeitschrift (volume 298, issue 2).

From the International Military Tribunal to the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings: The American Confrontation with Nazi Criminality Revisited

Nuremberg as event and as process: what does ‘Nuremberg’ mean? At the simplest, literal level it refers to the prosecution, in the German city of that name, of twenty-two senior German figures and six organizations before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in 1945–6. It can also represent the tens of thousands of trials of greater and lesser war criminals and collaborators conducted in Europe and Southeast Asia in the post-war period by the Allies, the liberated nations, and even erstwhile perpetrator states themselves. Figuratively, ‘Nuremberg’ can evoke any trial of transgressors of international humanitarian law anywhere since 1945. Pejoratively, and less often non-pejoratively, it stands for ‘the political trial’ or ‘victor's justice’. To the lawyers, judges and defendants involved, and to the German public of the post-war years, ‘Nuremberg’ might connote not just the IMT trial but also the twelve subsequent trials before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMTs) conducted in 1946–9 by the American occupation authorities against ‘major war criminals of the second rank’. Finally, to those interested not just in the purely legal successes and controversies of the trials, ‘Nuremberg’ may embrace the political aftermaths, as many convicted war criminals were prematurely released in the changed international circumstances of the 1950s.

KIM C. PRIEMEL and ALEXA STILLER, editors. Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals: Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography.

KIM C. PRIEMEL and ALEXA STILLER, editors. Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals: Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography.

Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals: transitional justice, trial narratives, and historiography

List of Figures List of Abbreviations Foreword Michael Marrus Introduction: Nuremberg's Narratives - Revising the Legacy of the Kim C. Priemel and Alexa Stiller Chapter 1.The Trials of Robert Kempner. From Stateless Immigrant to Prosecutor of the Foreign Office Dirk Poppmann Chapter 2. A Judge, a Prosecutor and a Mass Murderer: Courtroom Dynamics in the SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial Hilary Earl Chapter 3. Victims, Witnesses and the Ethical Legacy of the Nuremberg Medical Trial Paul Weindling Chapter 4. Semantics of Extermination: The Use of the New Term of Genocide in the Nuremberg Trials and the Genesis of a Master Narrative Alexa Stiller Chapter 5. The SS as the 'Alibi of a Nation'? Narrative Continuities from the Nuremberg Trials to the 1960s Jan Erik Schulte Chapter 6. Tales of Totalitarianism. Conflicting Narratives in the Industrialist Cases at Nuremberg Kim C. Priemel Chapter 7. From Clean Hands to Vernichtungskrieg: How the High Command Case Shaped the Image of the Wehrmacht Valerie Hebert Chapter 8. The Power of Images: Real and Fictional Roles of Atrocity Film Footage at Nuremberg Ulrike Weckel Chapter 9. The Fate of Nuremberg: The Legacy and Impact of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials in Postwar Germany Devin Pendas Chapter 10. From IMT to NMT: The Emergence of a Jurisprudence of Atrocity Lawrence Douglas Bibliography Notes on Contributors Index

The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law, Kevin Jon Heller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), xviii + 509 pp., hardback, $135.00.

Jurists, legal scholars, and historians appear unified in viewing the trial of the major Nazi war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg as the single most important event in the development of international criminal law. Conferences staged several years ago to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of the trial often had a celebratory, even hagiographic quality. Law students around the globe now dutifully study the so-called “Nuremberg Principles,” which insist, among other things, that “acts of state” and “superior orders” supply no defense against the charge of perpetrating international crimes. By contrast, the twelve so-called “subsequent proceedings” undertaken by American jurists before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT) have long been considered nothing more than footnotes to the IMT—and unhappy ones at that. The trials often warrant no more than brief mention in textbooks on international criminal law and are seen to have delivered little in terms of precedent. Now, however, scholars have begun the important task of re-assessing the NMT program and rescuing it from its decades of comparative neglect. These include useful treatments of individual trials, such as Valerie Hébert's study of the High Command case, Hitler's Generals on Trial (2010), and Hilary Earl's The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945–1958 (2009). What was missing in the scholarly literature, however, was an assessment of the trial program as a whole, a gap that has now been admirably filled by Kevin Jon Heller's The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law. Well-written, vigorously researched, and impressively ambitious in its scope, Heller's book makes an important case for a proposition that I take to be correct: in important respects the NMT program, more than the IMT, anticipated, if not paved the way to, more recent developments in international criminal law. Though following directly on the heels of the IMT, the NMT proceedings soon began re-orienting and transforming the jurisprudential paradigm that guided the trial of the major war criminals, delivering in its place a template for the future development of international criminal law.

Kevin Jon Heller, The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law

Kevin Jon Heller, The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law

The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law. By KEVIN JON HELLER

The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law. By KEVIN JON HELLER

The Holocaust and medical ethics: the voices of the victims

Fifty-nine years ago, Dr Leo Alexander published his now famous report on medicine under the Nazis. In his report he describes the two major crimes of German physicians. The participation...