DOI 10.1163/15718050-12340208
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10072
Abstract:
During the 1940s in London, exiled lawyers from Europe and Asia were among the main actors in coining one of the most known principles of international criminal law. The notion of ‘crimes against humanity’ emanated from their legal debates. This paper debates how the term surfaced in meetings of the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC) in 1944 and was taken up by the London Charter for the Nuremberg International Tribunal in 1945. Legal concepts, which previously needed to be discussed at conferences and via correspondence, developed much more quickly in the ‘breeding ground’ of the exile situation in London and were influenced by different legal traditions, here termed ‘legal flows’.
Crossroads in London on the Road to Nuremberg: The London International Assembly, Exile Governments and War Crimes (Julia Eichenberg) (OPEN ACCESS)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10071
Abstract:
During the Second World War, representatives of occupied European countries fled the continent, mostly to Great Britain. From 1940 onwards, exiled political representatives of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia and Free France were situated in London. This initiated debates about a broad range of legal issues, ranging from recognition and legitimacy to post-war justice. Law thus became a focal point in London, both imperative to uphold statehood and legitimacy in exile and an indispensable tool for planning and structuring the post-war world. This article looks at the pre-history of the UNWCC and presents interests and forces behind the creation of such a commission, and the attempts of different groups, states and individuals to maintain agency. This article will introduce discussions around the St James’s Declaration, the London International Assembly (LIA) and at Chatham House as important steps leading towards the UNWCC.
The Absent Player: The Soviet Union and the Genesis of the Allied War Crimes Trials Program, 1941–1943 (Valentyna Polunina)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10079
Abstract:
During World War II, it was important for the Kremlin to be a part of the Allied effort to prosecute war criminals, and initially Moscow planned to join the UNWCC. However, attempts by the Soviet Union to increase its influence on the Commission led to the opposition of the Western Allies. The USSR wanted to demonstrate that they were capable of conducting their own investigations. With this task in mind, Moscow founded their alternative to the UNWCC – the Extraordinary State Commission. This article seeks to address the influence of Soviet legal innovations on the UNWCC – in particular on the Czechoslovak representative Bohuslav Ečer – as well as Moscow’s own attempts to investigate Nazi war crimes.
The United Nations War Crimes Commission and the Prosecution of War Criminals in Yugoslavia (Sabina Ferhadbegović)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10066
Abstract:
To understand the different developments that shaped the Yugoslav war crimes policy it is important to analyse the impact of international discussions on the Yugoslav criminal law and the Yugoslav involvement in the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC). During the Second World War two different institutions claimed to be the legal representatives of the Yugoslav people: The Yugoslav government in exile in London and the communist led AVNOJ (The Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia). With this in mind, this paper analyses Yugoslav war crimes policies from different perspectives and in different settings. It shows that the Yugoslav`s discussion about the punishment of war criminals was influenced by power struggles, geopolitical aims, and legitimacy. While Yugoslav government in exile got lost in internal nationalist struggles, it was the Yugoslav representative at the UNWCC, and the communist led State commission to investigate the crimes of the occupiers and their accomplices who took the active role and shaped the Yugoslav war crimes policy. In consequence the Yugoslav national law for prosecuting war crimes was developed from different sources: pre-WWII traditions, Soviet law, and the UNWCC.
A Lawyer in Exile: Johannes M. de Moor and the Circulation of Legal Knowledge in Wartime London (Sara Weydner)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10067
Abstract:
De Moor’s biography illustrates how people and ideas travelled between and within national and transnational spaces. He played a role in the circulation of legal knowledge in the transnational epistemic community, more precisely between the Cambridge Commission and the London International Assembly. In thinking about the future of the international order and the place of nation states within it, De Moor came to embrace the idea that state sovereignty and the rule of law had to be recalibrated and that, as a logical conclusion, war crimes could be prosecuted internationally. In London, he became an advocate for a universal organization backed by an international court and an international armed force. He envisioned an international rule of law as the underlying system governing the international order.
The Imperial Precipice: Jurists and Diplomats of the French Empire at the United Nations War Crimes Commission (Ann-Sophie Schoepfel)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-bja10070
Abstract:
Delving into world-spanning legal agencies, histories of exiled diplomats and lawyers, this paper explores how Free France defended at the United Nations War Crimes Commission the vision of the interwar liberal order, one that reached across the global territories of the mandate system administered by the League of Nations, into the colonial territories of the French empire. From London to Chongqing, facing Vichy collaborationist authoritarian dictatorship in metropolitan France and anti-colonial pressures from the turbulent colonial frontiers, a handful of Free French jurists and politicians worked day and night to establish the imperial sovereignty of the French exile committee of general Charles de Gaulle, and restore French republicanism rooted in the legal tradition of Nicolas Fouquet, Jacques de Maleville and Léon Duguit. Drawing upon newly-unsealed UN and French archival materials, this paper documents Free France’s intervention at the UNWCC, the activities of its representatives and reflection on empires, race and international law.
Australian Representatives to the UNWCC, 1943–1948 (Narrelle Morris)
DOI 10.1163/15718050-12340204
Abstract:
Australia had a number of significant personnel involved in the United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC). Yet the strongest Australian influence on the UNWCC was not Australian at all; it was the British-born jurist Lord Wright of Durley, who served as Australia’s representative from mid-1944 and as UNWCC chair during the pivotal years from 1945 to 1948. Lord Wright took charge only months before the wars in Europe and the Pacific ended and thus played a significant role in directing the UNWCC’s efforts during this crucial period. Unfortunately, the UNWCC became less and less able over time to influence its national members and their approaches to prosecuting war crimes. The eventual sidelining of the UNWCC does not, however, change its important place in the history of multilateral institutions that sought to deal with war crimes committed in the twentieth century by means of international criminal law. Nor does it detract from the honest and industrious work of the various national representatives, including Lord Wright, to ensure that war criminals did not escape justice.
Book reviews:
- Revolutions in International Law. The Legacies of 1917 , edited by Katryn Greenman, Anne Orford, Anna Sounders and Ntina Tzouvala (by Raluca Grosescu)
- International Organization as Technocratic Utopia , written by Jens Steffek (Negar Mansouri)
- Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories , edited by Ingo Venzke and Kevin Jon Heller (by Ville Kari)
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