Your comments about reading comprehension aside, it does not alter my point- whatever set of critics you 'paint' here are answered decisevely in the historical context by the Legs of the Nuremberg legacy and its success in the modern era in defining national and international law and philosophical groundwork for international relations.

Well, no. My original assertion was that the other prosecutors were "almost comically disappointed" by the legal theory offered by the U.S. prosecutor. If it wasn't too much trouble, I'd delve into the transcripts and cite their words, but I doubt your limited comprehension would give you the same impression in any event.

Your next coupla paragraphs argue against strawmen (you interpret "abomination" to mean an "absolutist position" and an argument for "precedence as the sole grounding for legality," which of course isn't true.

As for actually grounding the Nuremburg principles, the League of Nations had drawn up many articles through 1941 regarding the 'right' of freedom and establishing a notion (based on the american notion) of inalienable human rights.

IIRC, Hitler's Germany resigned from the League of Nations years before he began gassing Jews.

Odin: As far as: "the Nuremberg trials were considered by some (yes, even by some in academia) to be legal travesties. "

Davin: well, some people think that the holocaust never happened- and yes, some of them are 'in' academia (for whatever that means). It does not make their argument legitimate or founded. Yours is neither.

Reminds me of the response I got from Frank when he said current deficits would be worse without Bush's tax cuts. When I pointed out that even Bush's chairman of his Council of Economic
Advisors said that was "unlikely," Frank said he wasn't "impressed" with my sources.

Here you compare William Douglas, commonly touted as one of the brilliant legal minds of his time, to people who "think that the holocaust never happened." No wonder people're giving you hemlock. Society is ill-served when its impressionable students are instructed by those who can't
or won't distinguish between credible and non-credible sources. Did you and Frank teach at the same top 20 school?

I'm not concerned that nobody sat down and postulated before 1936 that industrial murder was a crime against humanity. While the world had seen large-scale ethnic slayings before, never had it seen its industrialization and never had it seen the scale of what took place under the reign of Nazi germany. One of the points about law that you fail to grasp is that it is a socio-political expediency. In as much as tyrants will always be concerned about what will happen to them in public if they cross certain lines, it is a good thing that the post-facto Seven Principles of Nuremburg were formulated and the Nazis were made exaples of. Bravo! Here Law has filled its role!

And I'm not concerned with whether or not you believe prosecuting people using ex post facto law is or was a good thing. The discussion pertained to whether the Germans violated German law when they gassed Jews, and the legal theory the U.S. offered to legitimize prosecution.

If the world community decides abortion kills human beings and is murder, some anti-choicers would probably be happy if ex post facto law was used to prosecute doctors who've performed abortions in the past. "Bravo!" they'd say. "Here Law has filled its role!"

Which might make you and people like you who believe in "social-political expediency" happy, but jurists like Douglas who place principle over expediency would undoubtedly be appalled.

Davin: Its also cited as the intellectual foundation for the modern notion of human rights (Notice VI.B and VI.C).

Odin: " LOL. It is? Who besides you has made such a ludicrous claim? Source, please!

Davin: I'm sorry that you are so ignorant of the intellectual tradition of human rights. You should educate yourself. This is pretty much a fundamental historical fact in any first course in Ethics or International Policy that deals with a notion of 'Human Rights'.

Please look up the article from The Nation that is quoted here. It is excellent! Also, an example of a course that finds the notion so intuitively obvious that itputs it on its syllabus. and here is a book in modern bioethics that demonstrates the continuing relevancy of the Seven Principles of Neuremburg. I have not read it, but it has been recommended to me.

Wrote The Nation magazine in 1995: "The human rights movement owes much of its legal foundation to the work of Gen. Telford Taylor . . . Nuremberg gave legitimacy to the concept that the world had something to say about how governments treat their own citizens. In 1950 the United Nations codified Nuremberg's most important statements into seven Nuremberg Principles, which have since been adopted by the legal systems of almost every major nation."
. . .

You really do have problems with reading comprehension. This excerpt is concerned with the international human rights movement, not "the intellectual foundation for the modern notion of human rights."

Ultimately, you are an ignorant troll Odin, and I wash my hands of you. You think argument is for the sole purpose of 'winning', and are willing to pull outrageous rhetorical stunts to get there. Since my other area of expertise is in Symbolic Logic, I'm afraid it won't work with me.

Not much point in correcting what I perceive to be all your other errors and misconceptions, then. You may want to think about the legitimacy of an "implied social contract" when the whole doesn't protect the interests of the parts, but I see no evidence that your intellectual hubris will allow you the luxury of thought. Like the fundies, you knows what you knows.

Btw, hemlock is poisonous. (Thank you, Steve Martin.)