On this day in 1945, Justice Robert H. Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the USA, delivered his opening statement before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Courtroom 600 of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice. IMT President Judge Geoffrey Lawrence called upon Justice Jackson after the 20 defendants present in the courtroom entered pleas of not guilty.

Justice Jackson’s opening statement was eloquent, clear and moving. He began by emphasising the “grave responsibility” that came with the “privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world” ⚖️. The wrongs that the Tribunal sought to condemn and punish, he noted, were “so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilisation cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated”.
This powerful remark encapsulated the preventive purpose of the trial of the high-ranking officials of Nazi Germany, who were not only “the first war leaders of a defeated nation to be prosecuted in the name of the law”, but also “the first to be given the chance to plead for their lives in the name of the law”. He further reminded the Tribunal — and the world — that “the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow.”

Before the session was adjourned until the next day, Justice Jackson concluded his statement with prescient and resonant words. Civilisation, he observed, “does not expect that you can make war impossible. It does expect that your juridical action will put the forces of international law — its precepts, its prohibitions and, most of all, its sanctions — on the side of peace” 🕊️, so that men and women of good will, in all countries, may have ‘leave to live by no man‘s leave, underneath the law’.”

Photo Credits:
Photo 1&2: National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
Photo 3: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7397550975978307584/