398 Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1914– )in the United States, did some preparatory work for the trial by serving as
legal adviser to the United Nations War Crimes Commission in Washing-
ton. Quincy Wright served on the American prosecution team at the trials.
Lauterpacht (whose Polish relatives had been exterminated in the war) did
some preliminary work for the prosecution as a member of the British War
Crimes Executive in 1945– 46, and also attended the trials. Schwarzen-
berger declined to work for the trials, on the ground that a victim of Nazi
activities should not act as a judge (relatives of his had been killed during
the war).
Jackson’s principal interest was in the charge of crimes against the peace.
Th e legal basis of it was Germany’s egregious violations of the Pact of Paris—
even though the pact did not contain any statement of individual criminal
responsibility. In the unfolding of the proceedings, little attention was given
to crimes against humanity, which were treated in eff ect as an extension of
war crimes. In the fi nal judgment in October 1946, nineteen of the twenty-
two defendants were convicted on one or more counts. (On crimes against
the peace, there were twelve convictions and four acquittals; on war crimes,
sixteen convictions and two acquittals; and on crimes against humanity, six-
teen convictions and two acquittals.) Twelve were sentenced to hang.
One of the defenses advanced was that there was no such thing as crimes
against the peace in international law. Th e tribunal ruled, however, that the
Pact of Paris had the eff ect of creating a criminal off ense of planning aggres-
sive war, even if only implicitly. Th e pact therefore stands as a shining ex-
ample of a legal initiative producing a consequence that was utterly unfore-
seen by its draft ers at the time of making. Even though it contained no
explicit provision on criminality, the pact was nonetheless held, in the some-
what vague wording of the judgment, to “involve” the proposition that “those
who plan and wage... a war” in violation of its provisions “are committing a
crime in so doing.” As a consequence, the planning of aggressive war is “not
merely illegal”— that is, is not merely a treaty violation by the state as such—
“but is [also] criminal,” entailing the punishment of responsible offi cials.
Th e tribunal even went on to pronounce aggressive war to be “the supreme
international crime.”
Th e tribunal went further yet, by holding that the personal criminal lia-
bility of the leaders was actually more fundamental than the civil liability of
the state whose governmental apparatus they controlled. In words that