Flaws in the Nuremberg Legacy: An Impediment to International War Crimes Tribunals' Prosecution of Crimes Against Humanity

This article examines the legal and historical issues that arose at Nuremberg and that have frustrated subsequent efforts—through the 1998 charter of the International War Crimes Tribunal—to establish an international framework for prosecuting crimes against humanity. Wolfe concludes that the main obstacle to the successful establishment of such a tribunal continues to be the abiding reluctance of nations to yield elements of their sovereignty to an international legal body. Yet, in the course of his study, he also argues that it is unfair to fault Nuremberg for not creating a workable, international legal precedent to prosecute war crimes. For despite their legacy, the Nuremberg trials did accomplish what all later war crimes prosecutions have attempted: they produced incontrovertible evidence of genocide.