The report of the commission also contains commentaries on the principles. Principle I Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment. Principle II The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility under international law. Principles III The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility under international law.
Principle IV The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him. Principle V Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.
Principle VI The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:. Crimes Against Peace: a. Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;. War Crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
Crimes Against Humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime. Principle VII Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principles VI is a crime under international law.
Contrary to the original plans, no subsequent international tribunal took place because the four Allies were unable to agree on joint subsequent trials. As a compromise, the quadripartite Control Council that governed Germany enacted a law authorizing each of the four Powers to carry on with such prosecution in its own zone of occupation as it might see fit.
From , twelve U. Similar trials were conducted in the French, British and Soviet zones of occupation. Its impact caused several effects beyond creating a mere term to be used in military tribunals and political purposes.
This convention criminalized genocide and related activities in the international sphere, and the convention itself is heavily influenced by many of the Nuremberg principles. It also extended this crime against humanity beyond periods of war and the specific scenario of the Second World War.
The Genocide Convention was not, per se, a major advancement in the upholding of international human rights, especially considering its provision in Articles V and VI, which provide that states should regulate their legal systems accordingly to criminalize such acts in the domestic sphere, and that those found guilty of the crime of genocide should be tried in the courts of the country where the acts were committed in absence of a competent international tribunal with consented jurisdiction over the matter, and many academics have shown to be quite skeptical about its practical possibilities.
However, on the theoretical arena the Convention Against Genocide is a development from the precepts set in Nuremberg, in such a sudden and ad hoc manner, especially where codification of Crimes Against Humanity is concerned. The Convention takes the main aspect of these crimes, extirpates it from a broad definition, and narrows it down into one separate and codified principle.
Genocide as defined in Articles II and III practically cover all those measures taken by the Nazis during their persecution and brutal extermination of certain social, religious and cultural groups: those same atrocities which the members of the Court dubbed as Crimes Against Humanity took concrete form in this Convention. In the United Nations issued the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the first legal document to recognize such rights as binding, and creating the notion of Human Rights as we understand it today.
The influence which Nuremberg and to a certain extent the Tokyo trials had upon the formulation and conception of such a declaration cannot be understated. Nuremberg had for the first time in international law traced a definite distinction between jus ad bello a doctrine concerned exclusively on the conduct in warfare, and jus ad bellum, which concerns itself with the justice or legality of the waging of war. By introducing the new principles of Crimes Against Peace and Crimes Against Humanity, Nuremberg effectively fathered a globalized concern towards certain attitudes in war and, by extension, for the rights of all human beings suffering the effects of certain modes of violence.
This supposed impact on the Universal Declaration has been backed up by the fact that some academics have stated that the UN Charter itself was almost a product of Nuremberg and the issues raised before, during and after the Trial.
Superior orders would be no excuse but could be considered in mitigation. Inspired by the horrors revealed at the Nuremberg Trials, the Assembly passed another resolution calling for a convention to prohibit and punish the crime of genocide — by such a tribunal as might later prove acceptable to the parties. Experts were soon designated to draw up a Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind and to draft statutes for an international criminal court to punish such offenses.
In December , the U. The resolution was one of the so-called Geneva conventions, named after the Swiss city where they were signed. During the Tokyo trials extensive reference was made to Nuremberg and its definition of Crimes Against Humanity.
Accordingly to several academics, Article 6 C of the Charter drafted in the London Agreement was in a way formulated exclusively with the thought of prosecuting the Nazi leaders held responsible for the atrocities committed against the Jewish people and other targeted groups both inside and outside Germany. Tokyo was the first stepping-stone from Nuremberg, which would lead to the universalization of Crimes Against Humanity and its relevant derivations.
The end of tight Communist control in Eastern Europe also unleashed long-suppressed nationalism among ethnic groups. Ethnic-based conflict broke out almost immediately, prompted largely by the resistance to independence of large Serb minorities in Croatia. In , the Security Council established a Commission of Experts to investigate evidence of violations of humanitarian law in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
The accounts of atrocities in the early years of the Bosnian Civil War prompted the creation of the first international war-crimes court since Nuremberg and Tokyo. In May , the U. The new court, with its seat in The Hague was given responsibility for prosecuting crimes that violated the Geneva Conventions, including genocide and Crimes Against Humanity.
As of September , a total of 78 individuals have been publicly indicted by the Court. Fifty-seven of those indicted are Serbs, 18 are Croats and 3 are Moslems. The court handed down its first sentence in November , sentencing Drazen Edemovic, a Croat who served in the Bosnian Serb Army, to ten years in prison for his role in the Srebrenica massacre.
There were reports that perhaps half a million Tutsi and their supporters were being savagely massacred by the dominant Hutu government. The Security Council sent a small commission to investigate Res. United Nations forces were dispatched to Rwanda to help restore order to that battered country.
It followed closely the general outlines of the ICTFY but was more explicit in assuring that even in a civil conflict violations of the rules of war would not be tolerated. The Court was authorized to prosecute for genocide, Crimes Against Humanity and war crimes regardless of whether the strife was called an international conflict or a civil war.
Because of the nature of the internal conflict, the inclusion of aggression as a crime within the jurisdiction of the court was not relevant.
Only the specified crimes committed within the defined area during the year could be dealt with. The Rwanda Court was thus a special tribunal of very limited jurisdiction. In , the statute of the Court was approved in Rome and it has entered into force the first of July , when the required number of country ratifications was attained. The court holds a promise of putting an end to the impunity that reigns today for human rights violators and bringing us a more just and more humane world. In the U.
Sadly we realize that the cruelties during World War II were not isolated incidents. Genocide has since Nuremberg taken place in Uganda, in Cambodia, in Rwanda, in Somalia, in Bosnia, and the list could go on. Without doubt, these courts have significantly contributed to the development of international criminal law, but they have not been entirely successful.
Their biggest problems have been the lack of formal means of enforcement to seize indicted criminals. After the Cold War tensions had dissolved the world community showed a renewed interest in creating an international criminal court. This statute was presented in The following year a preparatory committee was established to further review the substantive issues regarding the creation of a court based on the ILC report and statute.
The aim was to prepare a convention for the ICC that had the prospects of being widely accepted globally. This is the first ever permanent, treaty-based, international criminal court established to promote the rule of law and ensure that the gravest international crimes do not go unpunished. The 60th instrument of ratification was deposited with the Secretary General on 11 April , with ten countries simultaneously deposited their instruments of ratification.
Accordingly, the statute entered into force 1 July Anyone who commits any of the crimes under the statute after this date will be liable for prosecution by the Court. An allied coalition led by the United States immediately began to bombard Iraqi troops. After Iraq was routed, the Council imposed a host of new conditions and sanctions designed to secure peace in the area in the future. What was glaringly absent was U.
Instead of following the Nuremberg principle of punishing only the guilty after a fair trial, economic sanctions were imposed on the civilian population of Iraq — many of whom might have disagreed with the aggressive policies of their government.
The lessons of Nuremberg seemed to have been forgotten. It now appears that Hussein will be tried by the Iraqi Special Tribunal that was established in This Tribunal, which is yet to commence operation, has jurisdiction over crimes of genocide, war crimes and Crimes Against Humanity committed since Questions also remain as to whether the trial and sentencing of Hussein will conform with international human rights standards and whether it will served the ends of justice and reconciliation in Iraq.
Having the Iraqis themselves try Saddam avoids the imperialism perception a U. Iraqi council members have assured their citizens they will televise the trial, so that everyone can see Saddam getting his day in court and understand the depth and breadth of the atrocities he and his regime committed. While they are worthy accusers, they are not the only people against whom Hussein committed crimes.
Iran wants Saddam tried for starting the Iran-Iraq War in Kuwait wants him tried for invading that country in Israel wants to know whether scud missile attacks are war crimes. To some the count may appear as nothing more than the ancient rule that the vanquished are at the mercy of the victor. To others it may appear as the mere declaration of an always latent doctrine that the leaders of a nation are subject to outside judgment as to their motives in waging war.
The other feature of the Nuremberg indictment is Count 1, charging a "conspiracy. In international as well as in national law there may be for almost any crime what the older lawyers would have called principal offenders and accessories. If Adolph is determined to kill Sam, and talks the matter over with Berthold, Carl, and Dietrich, and Berthold agrees to borrow the money to buy a pistol, and Carl agrees to make a holster for the pistol, and all of them proceed as planned and then Adolph gives the pistol and holster to Dietrich, who goes out alone and actually shoots Sam without excuse, then, of course, Adolph, Berthold, Carl, and Dietrich are all guilty of murder.
They should not be allowed to escape with the plea Macbeth offered for Banquo's murder, "Thou canst not say I did it.
If the conspiracy charge in Count 1 meant no more than that those are guilty who plan a murder and with knowledge finance and equip the murderer, no one would quarrel with the count.
But it would appear that Count 1 meant to establish some additional separate substantive offense of conspiracy. That is, it asserts that there is in international law a wrong which consists in acting together for an unlawful end, and that he who joins in that action is liable not only for what he planned, or participated in, or could reasonably have foreseen would happen, but is liable for what every one of his fellows did in the course of the conspiracy.
Almost as broad a doctrine of conspiracy exists in municipal law. But what is the basis for asserting so broad a substantive crime exists in the international law? Where is the treaty, the custom, the academic learning on which it is based? Is this not a type of "crime" which was first described and defined either in London or in Nuremberg sometime in the year ?
Aside from the fact that the notion is new, is it not fundamentally unjust? The crime of conspiracy was originally developed by the Court of Star Chamber on the theory that any unlicensed joint action of private persons was a threat to the public, and so if the action was in any part unlawful it was all unlawful. The analogies of the municipal law of conspiracy therefore seem out of place in considering for international purposes the effect of joint political action.
After all, in a government or other large social community there exists among the top officials, civilian and military, together with their financial and industrial collaborators, a kind of over-all working arrangement which may always be looked upon, if its invidious connotation be disregarded, as a "conspiracy. To take a case which is perhaps not so obvious, is everyone who joins a political party, even one with some illegal purposes, to be held liable to the world for the action that every member takes, even if that action is not declared in the party platform an was not known to or consented to by the person charged as a wrongdoer?
To put upon any individual such responsibility for action of the group seems literally to step back in history to a point before the prophet Ezekiel and to reject the more recent religious and democratic teachings that guilt is personal.
Turning now from the legal basis of the indictment, I propose briefly to consider whether, quite apart from legal technicalities, the procedure of an international military tribunal on the Nuremberg pattern is a politically acceptable way of dealing with the offenders in the dock and those others whom we may legitimately feel should be punished.
The chief arguments usually given for this quasi-judicial trial are that it gives the culprits a chance to say anything that can be said on their behalf, that it gives both the world today and the world tomorrow a chance to see the justice of the Allied cause and the wickedness of the Nazis', and that it sets a firm foundation for a future world order wherein individuals will know that if they embark on schemes of aggression or murder or torture or persecution they will be severely dealt with by the world.
The first argument has some merit. The defendants, after hearing and seeing the evidence against them, will have an opportunity without torture and with the aid of counsel to make statements on their own behalf. For us and for them this opportunity will make the proceeding more convincing. Yet the defendants will not have the right to make the type of presentation that at least English-speaking persons have thought the indispensable concomitant of a fair trial.
No one expects that Ribbentrop will be allowed to summon Molotov to disprove the charge that in invading Poland Germany started an aggressive war. No one anticipates that the defense, if it has the evidence, will be given as long a time to present its evidence as the prosecution takes. And there is nothing more foreign to those proceedings than either the presumption that the defendants are innocent until proved guilty or the doctrine that any adverse public comment on the defendants before the verdict is prejudicial to their receiving a fair trial.
The basic approach is that these men should not have a chance to go free. And that being so, they ought not to be tried in a court of law. As to the second point, one objection is purely pragmatic. There is a reasonable doubt whether this kind of trial, despite the voluminous and accessible record it makes, persuades anyone.
It brings out new evidence, but does it change men's minds? Most reporters say that the Germans are neither interested in nor persuaded by these proceedings, which they regard as partisan. They regard the proceedings not as marking a rebirth of law in Central Europe but as a political judgment on their former leaders. The same attitude may prevail in future because of the departure from accepted legal standards. A more profound objection to the second point is that to regard a trial as a propaganda device is to debase justice.
To be sure, most trials do and should incidentally educate the public. Yet any judge knows that if he, or counsel, or the parties regard a trial primarily as a public demonstration, or even as a general inquest, then there enter considerations which would otherwise be regarded as improper.
In a political inquiry and even more in the spread of propaganda, the appeal is likely to be to the unreflecting thought and the deep-seated emotions of the crowd untrammeled by any fixed standards. The objective is to create outside the courtroom a desired state of affairs. In a trial the appeal is to the disinterested judgment of reasonable men guided by established precepts.
The objective is to make inside the courtroom a sound disposition of a pending case according to settled principles. The argument that these trials set a firm foundation for a future world legal structure is perhaps debatable.
The spectacle of individual liability for a world wrong may lead to future treaties and agreements specifying individual liability. If this were the outcome and if, for example, with respect to wars of aggression, war crimes, and use of atomic energy the nations should agree upon world rules establishing individual liability, then this would be a great gain.
But it is by no means clear that this trial will further any such program. At the moment, the world is most impressed by the undeniable dignity and efficiency of the proceedings and by the horrible events recited in the testimony. But, upon reflection, the informed public may be disturbed by the repudiation of widely accepted concepts of legal justice. It may see too great a resemblance between this proceeding and others which we ourselves have condemned.
If in the end there is a generally accepted view that Nuremberg was an example of high politics masquerading as law, then the trial instead of promoting may retard the coming of the day of world law. Quite apart form the effect of the Nuremberg trial upon the particular defendants involved, there is the disturbing effect of the trial upon domestic justice here and abroad. Indeed our complaisance may mark the beginning of an age of reaction in constitutionalism in particular and of law in general.
Have we forgotten that law is not power, but restraint on power? If the Nuremberg trial of the leading Nazis should never have been undertaken, it does not follow that we should not have punished these men.
Soon after, he made efforts to expand the role of the position, including the ability to introduce any law without the consent of Parliament. In , after the death of the German President, Hitler used his unchecked legislative power to combine his role with that of the president. Immediately following World War II, a series of thirteen trials were held, bringing to justice those responsible for these war crimes and others. Later that year, the Allies met again at the Tehran Conference, where Soviet leader Joseph Stalin proposed the simple execution of the responsible German parties.
While U. President Franklin D. Roosevelt entertained the idea, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill suggested a trial in the location that the crime was committed. In , the major Allies met again at the Yalta Conference where they reiterated that the punishment of Nazis would be imminent, regardless of the method. In the same year, President Roosevelt died and Harry S.
Truman assumed office. President Truman favored the judicial approach for bringing major members of the Nazi government to justice, and thus the Nuremberg trials were born.
In August , the European Advisory Commission issued the London Charter , outlining the rules and procedures for the Nuremberg trials. The first of 13 Nuremberg trials commenced on November 20, with the International Military Tribunal. Twenty-four individuals and seven organizations were brought before the Tribunal, each with four charges:.
Parker, and Justice Robert H. Jackson respectively. Users may look to the volume official record of the International Military Tribunal as a comprehensive compilation of documents and transcripts relating to the trial. Within this record, discover some of its most critical moments. On October 1, , the tribunal handed down its judgment for each organization and individual involved, with the following outcomes:. The following Nuremberg trials were held between and Though 3, cases were considered, only went to trial.
The cases were grouped into 12 trials according to their alleged area of criminal activity—medical, legal, economic, political, etc. Of the 23 medical professionals accused, seven were sentenced to death and nine received prison sentences of varying lengths.
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