The Second World War and International Law

1946 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 742-755 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene A. Korovin

The Second World War inflicted countless sufferings and misfortunes on mankind. At the same time the war put to the test, in the sacrifice and heroism at the battlefronts and in the rear, many peoples and states, social forms and political systems, doctrines and theories.

1986 ◽  
Vol 80 (4) ◽  
pp. 896-901 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Lachs

To write of Philip Jessup means to survey the history of the teaching of international law in the United States throughout the last half century; to cover all important events concerning the birth of international organizations on the morrow of the Second World War; to visit the halls of the General Assembly and the Security Council; to attend meetings of the American Society of International Law and the Institute of International Law, where he so frequently took the floor to shed light on their debates; to attend sittings of the International Court of Justice in the years 1960-1969. I could hardly undertake this task; there are others much more qualified to do so. What I wish to do is to recall him as a great jurist I knew and a delightful human being; in short, a judge and a great friend whom I learned to admire.


2002 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Gavron

Amnesties presuppose a breach of law and provide immunity or protection from punishment. Historically amnesties were invoked in relation to breaches of the laws of war and were reciprocally implemented by opposing sides in an international armed conflict. The impact of the two world wars in the first half of the twentieth century, however, had considerable implications not only for the use of amnesties, but also for their legality under international law. The scale of the First World War precipitated a new phase of unilateral amnesty for the victors and prosecutions of war criminals for the defeated aggressor states.1 This precedent was followed after the Second World War,2 with the establishment of the first ‘international’3 criminal court, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. However, the horrors perpetrated during the Second World War also prompted the development of a branch of international law aimed at recognising and protecting human rights in an attempt to prevent such atrocities being repeated.


Author(s):  
Dean Aszkielowicz

Long before the Second World War ended, the Allies were planning to prosecute Axis war criminals, including both those in positions of leadership and the perpetrators of individual crimes. There was no standing war crimes court at the end of the Second World War, however, and the post-war trials were a watershed in international law. For the trials at Nuremberg and Tokyo, Allied planners drew on the development of international humanitarian law and international agreements signed by the combatants over the decades preceding the war. The vast majority of war criminals who were prosecuted did not face the court at Nuremberg or Tokyo: they appeared before national military tribunals which were conducted according to each prosecuting country’s war crimes law. The Australian War Crimes Act passed through the parliament in October 1945, shortly before trials began.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Niebuhr

When Yugoslav strongman Josip Broz Tito secured power at the end of the Second World War, he had envisioned for himself a new Yugoslavia that would serve as the center of power for the Balkan Peninsula. First, he worked to ensure a Yugoslav presence in the Trieste region of Italy and southern Austria as a way to gain territory inhabited by Slovenes and Croats; meanwhile, his other foreign policy escapades sought to make Yugoslavia into a major European power. To that end, Yugoslav agents quickly worked to synchronize the Albanian socio-economic and political systems through their support of Albanian Partisans and only grew emboldened over time. As allies who proved themselves in the fight against fascism, Yugoslav policymakers felt able to act with impunity throughout the early post-Cold War period. The goal of this article is to highlight this early foreign policy by focusing on three case studies – Trieste, Carinthia, and Albania – as part of an effort to reinforce the established argument over Tito's quest for power in the early Cold War period.


1989 ◽  
Vol 29 (268) ◽  
pp. 9-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Haug

The idea of “respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all” has been disseminated throughout the world since the Second World War and has influenced both international law and national legislation in many States. Nevertheless, torture, that most fundamental assault on the human person, has continued over the years to be practised, either systematically or occasionally, in many countries. Torture, in which a person is intentionally subjected to extreme physical pain or emotional distress, is used mainly to elicit information, break the will to resist, intimidate, humiliate and degrade. It is also used to mete out (illegal) punishment for real or supposed wrongdoings.2 Techniques of torture include withholding food and preventing sleep, abrupt alternation of extreme cold and heat or silence and noise, total isolation, causing mental confusion and distress through misinformation or other means, the use of brute force- sometimes resulting in permanent mutilation- rape, electric shocks, the application of chemicals and Pharmaceuticals, finally death threats.


Porównania ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mária Bátorová

Hronský’s work was written in Rome at the beginning of his journey until emigration in 1947/48. This, in terms of genre and content, is a distinctive form: an autobiographical tale through which the author erected a memorial. Andreas Búr embodies the capabilities and tragedy of the author. The sacrifice for the people who kill him bears in itself a Christian pathos and at the same time the extinction of everything the author was. His character remains in the memory of the people as the myth of an ethical act. Tatarka’s work was written in Slovakia in 1948. This critique of conventional Christianity, which has tragic consequences for a defenceless woman and her children, is linked with criticism of the author Hronský in the novel Andreas Búr Majster. The movement towards the myth of truth begins in Tatarka immediately at the time of thawing after Stalin’s death in the essay “Démon súhlasu” (The Demon of Conformity) and ends in the author’s 19 years of “life in truth” and the victim of a life without civil rights.


Author(s):  
Nenad Lajbenšperger

Publications about monuments to fighters and victims of the Second World War in Yugoslavia began to appear in the late 1950s. They were dedicated to one or more monuments or memorial complexes. Over time, in tourist guides, among other sites, monuments and memorials began to be presented as a significant place worth a visit. During the second half of the 1970s, printing of special tourist guides dedicated only to monuments and memorial complexes started. Because of the popularity of monuments, a sticker album was also printed. The intention behind printing such publications was to inform citizens about monuments, but there was also an ideological side to it. Through books about monuments, the state and the Communist party wanted to emphasize again Yugoslav war efforts and the sacrifice that was made during the war. They used it as a propaganda tool in youth education, foreign diplomacy and overall state propaganda about the role of Yugoslav partisans, under the leadership of the Communist party, in the victory against fascism.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-31
Author(s):  
René Värk

AbstractOccasionally, people characterise foreign military interventions as “undeclared wars”. It is not entirely clear what is the meaning and value of such a qualification, but it seems that they want to add an extra weight to their condemnation. Still, does it have legal significance? At times, international law demanded that States issued a declaration of war before the commencement of hostilities but the obligation was mostly ignored for varied reasons. Notably, between two world wars, States avoided certain legal obligations (e.g. the prohibition to use war, the rules of warfare) by not declaring or otherwise recognising a state of war. After the Second World War, considering the earlier abuses, States redesigned the international legal regulations in a way that the declaration of war became practically irrelevant when it comes to the legality or illegality of the use of armed force, or to the application of law.


Author(s):  
von Bernstorff Jochen

This chapter illustrates the deep structure of the Kelsenian approach to international law from an intellectual history perspective. Hans Kelsen (1881–1973) was a Viennese law professor in between the two world wars, who is seen by many as one of the most outstanding, if not the most outstanding, jurist of the twentieth century. Therefore studying the Kelsenian approach includes the political, doctrinal, and philosophical context in which Kelsen developed his fundamental critique of the then-prevailing German international law theory. Furthermore, the chapter reveals the subversive and revolutionary force of Kelsen’s critical methodology with a couple of examples, concluding with a few words on how German international legal scholarship dealt with Kelsen’s legacy after the Second World War.


Author(s):  
Gallus Nick

The period of an international tribunal’s temporal jurisdiction is the span of time during which an act must have occurred before the tribunal may consider if the act breached an obligation. There are many questions concerning this particular aspect of an international tribunal’s jurisdiction. Does a tribunal have power over acts that occurred after the entry into force of the obligation allegedly breached but before the tribunal’s jurisdiction was accepted? What about acts that began before the tribunal’s jurisdiction was accepted but continued after? To what extent can acts before the period of the tribunal’s jurisdiction affect its decision on whether or not there is a breach through acts afterwards?This book examines these questions in depth. Despite its importance, the temporal jurisdiction of international tribunals is not well understood. Tribunals often confuse different aspects of their jurisdiction and refuse to hear cases they should have heard, or agree to hear cases they should not. This book reduces this confusion by clarifying the different limits on the temporal jurisdiction of international tribunals and the important distinctions between those limits. The book examines the temporal limits resulting from the entry into force of the obligation allegedly breached, from the acceptance of the tribunal's jurisdiction, and from the period of limitation, as well as the effect of acts that occurred before these limits. The book comprehensively compares decisions from a wide variety of sources including the International Court of Justice Human Rights Courts World Trade Organization panels and investment treaty tribunals. It comments on decisions that arose from some of the most notorious events of the twentieth century including the ‘Katyn Massacre’ of the Second World War the 1994 Rwandan genocide and the ‘forced disappearance’ of American political opponents. It reviews these decisions and identifies common principles that help define the temporal jurisdiction of tribunals to decide breaches of international law.


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