Abstract
Guénaël Mettraux is defense counsel at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. In his position at the The Hague, and through his prior experience working in chambers at the Tribunal, Mettraux is uniquely placed to see firsthand the delivery of international criminal justice. As such, he is certainly well-qualified to edit this tome on Nuremberg. Perspectives on the Nuremberg Trial is a collection of thirty-two articles and essays and seven appendices that cover well-trodden ground. As the progenitor of modern international criminal law, the Nuremberg trial is a touchstone for all who practice in the field today—lawyers and judges alike. Indeed, key portions of the International Military Tribunal’s sixty-year-old opinion still are cited regularly by international criminal tribunals. Consequently, Mettraux’s challenge is to make relevant what already has been said about Nuremberg. Many of the articles in this book consider the Control Council trials and even the trial by the International Military Tribunal at Tokyo alongside Nuremberg, but the main thrust of the contributions centers on the initial collective trial of twenty-one Nazi co-conspirators conducted by the IMT in Nuremberg from November 21, 1945 through October 1, 1946 and led by Justice Robert H. Jackson as the chief prosecutor.