Nuremberg Law Should Apply to Nuclear Weapons Before They’re Used Again |
Image by Yves Alarie.
With another film depiction of the Nuremberg Military Tribunal story being debuted, today’s plans and preparations involving thermonuclear weapons should be adjudged in this historical context, before they are used again.
The United States was instrumental in creating the Nuremberg Charter, Principles and Judgment, and in orchestrating the Tribunals. The chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, made clear that the Tribunal’s function was to prosecute and punish the architects of the “final solution,” the designers, developers, and administrators that produced and implemented the gigantic apparatus of the holocaust which destroyed at least 10 million civilian victims.
Justice Jackson said in his opening remarks to the Tribunal that if the law it was about to enforce was to be viewed as legitimate, it must be applied universally, and not only to the defeated. Justice Jackson said: “We must........