A Comment on Professor Schick's Article, ‘International Criminal Law—Facts and Illusions’
| Date | 01 January 1949 |
| Published date | 01 January 1949 |
| Author | Hector Munro |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1949.tb00110.x |
FACTS AND ILLUSIONS
.4
Comment on Professor Schick’s Article,
‘
International
Criminal
Law-Facts and
Illusions
’.
PROFESSOR
LAUTERPACET once remarked ruefully that the attitude
of international lawyers to judicial settlement of inter-State disputes
‘creates the impression of baffled acquiescence in an inherited
evil
’.
The passage, together with some additional (though
delicately measured) strictures on international lawyers, will be
found at p.
485
of the
Function
of
Law
in
the
International
Com-
munity.
A
similar baffled acquiescence seems to haunt the
endeavours of certain learned writers to kill the Nuremberg trials.
The latest example is the article entitled
‘
International Criminal
Law-Facts and Illusions’, published in the July issue
of
The
Modern
Law
Review.
Volumes will be written about Nuremberg, but one important
aspect can be isolated and put quite briefly. The critics make the
stupendous, and shocking, assumption that there is nothing criminal
in
plotting
to
cause a world war leading to the death of millions.
Let the plotters be captured because their conspiracy fails; still
it
is
illegal to try them
for
aggression. They are innocent; the crime
simply does not exist. Strictly speaking, the opponents
of
Nurem-
berg see no difference between
a
conference where Hitler orders
a
new gasworks
for
Berlin, and a conference where he declares (as
he did) that
‘
there is therefore no question of sparing Poland, and
we are left with the decision
to
attack Poland at the first suitable
opportunity. We cannot expect a repetition of the Czech affair.
There will
be
war
’.
These fatal words were uttered at the secret meeting of May
28,
1989,
and revealed at the trial. Objectors not only think them
perfectly innocent, but get positively indignant because State
leaders are put in the dock for aiding and abetting the war-lord in
carrying them into practice four months later. This is an extra-
ordinary attitude, all the more extraordinary because it comes from
those whose task it is
to
expound and improve the infant science
of international law. After all, people are getting, shall we say,
a little worried about being wiped out en masse because someone
decides to have a war. Inconsiderate of them, no doubt, especially
when they are assured, by those whose business
it
is to know these
things, that no one commits a crime in giving orders that invasion is
to take place this day fortnight.
It
is not even
as
bad as riding a
bicycle without a light.
All
that one can say is that if this really
is
international law
it
makes itself ridiculous. The savant sits and
62
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