Charles E. Wyzanski Jr.

In the following article written at the time of the trial, U.S. District Court judge Charles E. Wyzanski Jr. considers the implications of the justice decided upon and meted out at Nuremberg. Wyzanski was a judge in Massachusetts not affiliated with the proceedings, but like all legal scholars he was concerned with the decisions of the trial. As Wyzanski points out, the indictments against the German defendants are often not based on legal precedent because there had never before been an international tribunal charged with the duty of trying war criminals. The crime of "waging an aggressive war," for example, had been previously leveled at entire nations, but at Nuremberg it was individual Germans who were accused of violating this law. To hold individual participants guilty of crimes of the state, in Wyzanski's view, is...