The Condition of Illegality Under International Law

Abstract

The basic definitions of crimes from the bench under international law were established by the US Military Tribunal in the Justice Case after the Second World War. Allied war crime tribunals based themselves on international law, and the judges were accused of the same crimes as other war criminals. The defendants were accused of participating in war crimes in their roles as leading officials in the Ministry of Justice and as prosecutors and judges in the German legal system. Some forms of war crimes were more relevant to their activities than others. Of specific importance in this respect was the development and execution of the “Night and Fog” programme, whereby civilians of occupied countries accused of alleged crimes in resistance activities against German occupying forces were spirited away for secret trial by special courts in Germany by order of the Ministry of Justice. A particular aspect of crimes against humanity is where acts were part of the extermination of a whole group of people, genocide, and where the acts were part of a systematic discrimination of a group. In addition to persecution and discrimination of own nationals on racial grounds, political persecution could also be regarded as a crime against humanity.