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Before the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, there were a long series of treaties, agreements and assurances that attempted to limit the evil done in times of war and to even reduce or eliminate the threat of war itself. By trying and punishing those Nazi leaders who ignored those pacts, Nuremberg and its subsequent trials and the agreements that followed it created precedents by which the nations of the world can hold states and statesmen accountable for aggressive war, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
We will discuss the way the original trial created a set of international standards that held leaders accountable for aggression and breaking the laws of war and created the concept of crimes against humanity.
We will then follow those themes to analyze how those standards have been applied and continue being applied today. In particular, the application of the post-Nuremberg treaties and prosecution of crimes against humanity at the modern-day ad hoc tribunals and the crime of aggression at the International Criminal Court. As part of the discussion, we will reflect on the parallels between the original trial at Nuremburg and the genocide trials before the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Adam Weber is best known for his prominent role as a Trial Attorney at the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). At the ICTY, he prosecuted cases involving senior political, police, and military officials for the commission of mass atrocity crimes. In his final case, Mr. Weber helped secure the conviction of General Ratko Mladić for genocide and crimes against humanity. His international experience includes deployments to areas of the former Yugoslavia, Africa, the Middle East, and China.
Mr. Weber is the Director of the Trial Advocacy LL.M. program at Chicago-Kent College of Law and a Deputy Supervisor in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. He also serves as an Advisory Director at Kent’s Center for National Security and Human Rights Law.
John Geiringer, the Regulatory Section Leader of the Barack Ferrazzano Financial Institutions Group, is a nationally recognized banking attorney who advises financial institutions on regulatory, governance, and investigative matters. He also serves as a founding co-director of the Center for National Security and Human Rights Law (and its Consortium for the Research and Study of Holocaust and the Law) at Chicago-Kent College of Law, where he teaches classes on banking, national security, and the Holocaust. Among his other publications, John is the editor of, and contributor to, Countering the Financing of Terrorism: Law and Policy, recently published by the American Bar Association, and is the co-editor of an upcoming treatise on legal issues surrounding the Holocaust.