Book Review: The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law (Kevin Jon Heller), (Oxford University Press, 2011)
European Human Rights Law Review, 2 (2012)
4 Pages Posted: 25 Jul 2015
Date Written: December 1, 2012
Abstract
Kevin Jon Heller’s legal, political and historical analysis of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT) provides an opportunity to better ground the burgeoning body of international criminal law in its early foundations. This review discusses how 'The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law' is a book of three parts, each of which makes important and notably different contributions to the study of international criminal justice. First, Heller provides an historical account of the twelve trials held in the American zone of occupation between 1946 and 1949. Second, he offers a clear and detailed analysis of the law as applied and developed through these trials and finally, in discussing the legacy of the NMTs, he pursues a critical evaluation of how the courts’ decisions have been used in subsequent legal proceedings. The book offers an unquestionably original appraisal of the NMTs, filling a clear gap in the current literature. In doing so it provides both a useful starting point for students of international criminal law and a valuable resource for scholars current immersed in the area. The book concludes by suggesting that the courts' role in building the foundations of an international legal regime are its greatest feat. Yet the question that this leaves is whether this contribution, viewed very favourably by the author, is a sufficient outcome or whether international criminal courts need to be justified in terms of doing something more than simply developing international criminal case law?
Keywords: Book review, international criminal law, Nuremberg Military Tribunals
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