TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE
Morley, Felix
Travesty Of Justice By FELIX MORLEY ON Nov. 12, the United States of America, acting through the duly appointed person of Robert H. Jackson, officially requested that the son of Gustav Krupp von...
...especially with Jews...
...The motion was not for the additional indictment of Alfried Krupp, but for the replacement of the ailing and senile father with what Justice Jackson called "a live Krupp," age 59...
...For neither President'Truman, nor Gen...
...One may pass over the propriety of that Government, which first employed the atom bomb, indicting individual Germans on the heels of Hiroshima, for "Crimes Against Humanity...
...applies Ex Post Facto Law in a manner for which it has no authority...
...See Page 2.) The question at issue is not the authority of this tribunal, but the capacity of the United States Government to participate in application by that organ of laws and practices which would have to be declared illegal in an American court...
...Therefore, "the Federal judiciary ought to have cognizance of all causes in which the citizens of other countries are concerned...
...12, the United States of America, acting through the duly appointed person of Robert H. Jackson, officially requested that the son of Gustav Krupp von Bohlen be substituted for the latter in the Nuremberg trials...
...These last are governed by national law, as the military trials are governed by martial law...
...Though such summary revenge would have had no legal justification it would have had the great advantage of being an honest and forthright action...
...The Nuremberg trials, in contrast, are altogether without that "due process of law" guaranteed, for defendants in American courts, by the Fifth Amendment to that Constitution which Justice Jackson is sworn to uphold...
...There is still less relationship between the Nuremberg trials and those for treason held in various Allied nations, such as that of Laval in France...
...Copyright 19i5 by Human Events, Inc., 1323 M Street, NW, Washington, D. C...
...And it further demonstrates the urgency of closer public attention to the practices which our Government is underwriting at Nuremberg, since they are practices which threaten to undermine principles for which the war was ostensibly fought...
...8 and is now sitting in judgment at Nuremberg...
...There could have been little or no objection if these men had been shot by military firing squads when captured...
...What cannot be accepted with indifference is the full implication, for America, of a shoddy legal masquerade in which our Government sits as judge in its own cause...
...But the proceedings at Nuremberg are supposed to be a reputable trial of the Nazi leaders, not an imitation of their methods...
...The First Article (Section 9, Clause 3) of the Constitution of the United States specifically prohibits the passage of any Bill of Attainder or Ex Post Facto Law...
...The French and Russian Governments associated themselves with the American motion...
...of Joyce (Lord Haw Haw) in Great Britain...
...This asserted that "supreme authority in Germany is exercised on instructions from their respective governments, by the Commanders-in-Chief of the armed forces . . ." Under this authority an International Military Tribunal with jurisdiction to try "the major war criminals of the European Axis" was established on Aug...
...The British, to their enduring credit, did not...
...So the motion was, at least temporarily, dismissed...
...The trials of the Nazi leaders, though they will take place before an international military tribunal composed of American, British, French, and Russian representatives, are not military trials...
...The incident, however, is proof—if proof were needed—that the Nuremberg trials are political rather than criminal in nature...
...That does not mean a Federal judge acting as an executive agent...
...AFTER our Civil War, though passions ran high and treason on the part of the Confederate leaders was at least arguable, nobody was hanged for a political crime...
...More than ever, today, men look to America as the hope of a dyinjg Christian civilization...
...Under the spell of Lincoln's truly noble leadership Americans were then magnanimous enough, and wise enough, to remember that "grass soon grows over blood shed upon the battlefield, but never over blood shed upon the scaffold...
...That hypothetical treaty may then be ratified by all or most of the governments adhering to the UNO...
...Such blanket coverage does, however, indicate a difference in mental and moral stature between Robert Houghwout Jackson and Edmund Burke, who in his immortal speech on Conciliation with America said: "I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against an whole people...
...There would then be valid law for the prosecution of men in the position of von Ribbentrop and Hess and, incidentally, also of men in the position of Stalin and Molotov, who were presumably personally responsible for Russia's violation of treaty with, and unprovoked attack upon, Japan, last August...
...The pseudo-legal trappings do not make less objectionable proceedings which history is likely to define as highly-organized lynchings...
...Nazi law did...
...80), where Alexander Hamilton says that "an unjust sentence against a foreigner" would risk violation of "the general law of nations...
...THE authority of the United States to place the Nazi leaders on trial may be admitted...
...IT is not for the sake of Goering, Stretcher, et at., that the procedure of the war crimes trials should,be very closely observed...
...It was affirmed, as a collaborative undertaking of this country, Great Britain, and Russia, in the Berlin Declaration of Aug...
...2, signed by Stalin, Truman, and Attlee...
...Even in the case of treason it is provided (Article III, Section 3) that ". . . no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted...
...18, to allegedly criminal acts by "the Germans...
...It is the present veneer of legality and pretense of justice which makes the scheduled trials dangerous to American institutions...
...Instead, we have gained the atomic bomb...
...The point is to some extent anticipated in The Federalist (No...
...At present, however, there is not even substantial Ex Post Facto Law, except as it has been unilaterally and arbitrarily decreed, to justify the legal antics—-no other word will serve—performed in Germany by a Justice of what was once the universally respected Supreme Court of the United States...
...That form of tyranny over their fellow man has been barred to Americans for all time, wherever the writ of the United States shall run—or so we thought...
...From this precise wording it would seem that the Constitution intends to protect civil rights and liberties not only for citizens and residents of the United States and its possessions, but also for any person or persons on trial in any case where the United States claims jurisdiction...
...America no longer harbors malice toward none and charity for all...
...seeks to dignify as "Justice" procedures which have their clearest precedent in the acts of the Nazis themselves...
...The undertaking is not related to the trials of enemy officers and enlisted men, by military courts, for prison camp atrocities and violation of the rules of war...
...One may pass over the frequent references, in the Indictment filedwith the International Military Tribunal on Oct...
...These trials, said the British prosecutor, are "not a game in which you can play one member of a team as a substitute for another...
...A similar provision, in Section 10 of Article I, applies to the States...
...Since the "most noble closing of the Civil War," wrote the English novelist George Meredith, "I have looked, to America as the hope of our civilization...
...But for that universal compassion which is essential to great leadership, men look in vain...
...Justice Jackson to the contrary notwithstanding, Anglo-Saxon criminal law does not tolerate the substitution of somebody "just as good" when a defendant is unable to stand trial...
...IN time, the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization may well approve an international convention for the individual punishment of leaders of a government which wages aggressive war, first providing a satisfactory definition of what constitutes aggression...
...of Quisling in Norway...
...Eisenhower, nor all the Supreme Court, nor all of Congress voting unanimously, possesses any authority to make new law applicable retroactively to an offense which was not illegal when committed...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 48
