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1. Persons may also wish to take a gander at the April 13, 1945 address of then Justice Robert Jackson to the American Society of International Law available at The Rule of Law Among Nations.

   Below is a quote from him about the nature of courts that are going to try war criminals as well as a response to those who are cynics about international law.

   
   I have no purpose to enter into any controversy as to what shall be done with war criminals, either high or humble. If it is considered good policy for the future peace of the world, if it is believed that the example will outweigh the tendency to create among their own countrymen a myth of martyrdom, then let them be executed. But in that case let the decision to execute them be made as a military or political decision. We must not use to forms of judicial proceedings to carry out or rationalize previously settled political or military policy. Farcical judicial trials conducted by us will destroy confidence in the judicial process as quickly as those conducted by any other people.Of course, if good faith trials are sought, that is another matter. I am not so troubled as some seem to be over problems of jurisdiction of war criminals or of finding existing and recognized law by which standards of guilt may be determined. But all experience teaches that there are certain things you cannot do under the guise of judicial trial. Courts try cases, but cases also try courts.
   
   You must put no man on trial before anything that is called a court, if you are not prepared to establish his personal guilt. I do not, of course, mean that every step must be taken in accordance with technical common-law rules of proof. The evidence to be received depends upon what the circumstances make available. But there is no reason for a judicial trial except to reach a judgment on a foundation more certain than suspicion or current rumor. Men of our tradition cannot regard any proceeding as a trial that does not honestly search for the facts, bring forward the best sources of proof obtainable, critically examine testimony. But, further, you must put no man on trial if you are not willing to hear everything relevant that he has to say in his defense and to make it possible for him to obtain evidence from others. Nothing more certainly discredits an inquiry than to refuse to hear the accused, even if what he has to say borders upon the immaterial or improbable. Observance of this principle is of course bound to make a trial something of a sounding board for the defense. We all remember the war-guilt trials that were begun by the Nazis and their collaborators in France. The court was at once put to the choice of suppressing the defense or of allowing the trial to become something of an instrument for disseminating the views of the accused. Any United Nations court that would try, say, Hitler or Goebbels would face the same choice. That is one of the risks that are taken whenever trials are commenced. The ultimate principle is that you must put no man on trial under the forms judicial proceedings if you are not willing to see him freed if not proven guilty. If you are determined to execute a man in any case, there is no occasion for a trial; the world yields no respect to courts that are merely organized to convict. I am not arguing against bringing those accused of war-crimes to trial. I am pointing out hazards that attend such use of the judicial process—risk on the one hand that the decision that most of the world thinks should be made may not be justified as a judicial finding, even if perfectly justified as a political policy; and the alternative risk of damage to the future credit of judicial proceedings by manipulations of trial personnel or procedure temporarily to invest with judicial character what is in fact a political decision. I repeat that I am not saying there should be no trials. I merely say that our profession should see that it is understood that any trials to which lawyers worthy of their calling lend themselves will be trials in fact, not merely trials in name, to ratify a predetermined result. Law Is More Than Power
   
   Of course there is a school of cynics in the law schools, at the Bar and on the Bench who will disagree, and many thoughtless people will see no reason why courts, just like other agencies, should not be policy weapons. It is a popular current philosophy, with adherents and practitioners in this country, that law is anything that can muster the votes to be put in legislation, or directive, or decision and backed with a policeman’s club. Law to those of this school has no foundation in nature, no necessary harmony with higher principles of right and wrong. They hold that authority is all that makes law, and power is all that is necessary to authority. It is charitable to assume that such advocates of power as the sole source of law do not recognize the identity of their incipient authoritarianism with that which has reached its awful climax in Europe.But we can have nothing in common with the cynics who would have us avoid disillusionment by having no ideals, who think that because they do not believe in anything, they cannot be fooled. We must keep the faith roughly stated by Lord Chief Justice Coke that even the King is “under god and the law.” I confess even to mid-Victorian romanticism, which believed that “Thrice armed is he whose cause is just.” Of course, these are difficult concepts for the most wise to delimit and apply and easy for the most shallow to ridicule. But unless there is something of substance in those teachings, there is nothing to law except the will of those who have the power.
   
   International Law Sanctions
   
   It is chiefly those who hold this idea of law who belittle international law because it lacks formal commitments of force to back up its precepts. This attitude, which considers itself a very practical one, I think misconceives the nature of law, the almost inevitable character of so many of its principles in a world ordered by any semblance of reason, and the influences that give law acceptance, vitality, and authority. The fact that a principle of international law does not readily translate into a court mandate, with an executive power committed faithfully to execute it, does not mean that it may with impunity be violated.
   

   (Emphasis added)

   5.28.2008
   at 6:40 pm EST Benjamin Davis

2. I would lift a glass with you, to such as these.

   And that Providence might grant us a few more such.

   5.28.2008
   at 8:32 pm EST Diplomatic Gunboat

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