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41 Am. J. Int'l L. 334 (1947)
Book Reviews

handle is hein.journals/ajil41 and id is 340 raw text is: BOOK REVIEWS The Nuremberg Trial and Aggressive War. By Sheldon Glueek. New York: Alfred A. Knopf; 1946. Pp. xvi, 121. $2.00. As the title indicates, this book deals with the charges at Nuremberg based upon the planning and waging of aggressive war. The author has written it because in his previous volume 1 he expressed the view that he did not think such acts could be regarded as international crimes. He has now changed his mind and believes that for the purpose of conceiving aggressive war to be an international crime, the Pact of Paris may, together with other treaties and resolutions, be regarded as evidence of a sufficiently developed custom to be accepted as international law (pp. 4-5). The au- thor became an adviser to the Chief Counsel of the United States at Nurem- berg, and Mr. Jackson contributes a commendatory foreword, but the vol- ume was written before the Nuremberg verdict was finally rendered on October 1, 1946. The reviewer fully agrees with the author in regard to the place of custom in the development of international law. He regards as untenable, how- ever, the argument not only of the author but of the prosecutors and judges at Nuremberg that custom can be judicially established by placing inter- pretations upon the words of treaties which are refuted by the acts of the signatories in practice, by citing unratified protocols or public and private resolutions of no legal effect, and by ignoring flagrant and repeated viola- tions of non-aggression pacts by one of the prosecuting governments which, if properly weighed in the evidence, would nullify any judicial holding that a custom outlawing aggressive war had been accepted in international law. The reviewer's leading article in this number of the JOURNAL gives his opinion on the Nuremberg Tribunal's finding under this count of the indictment. The author, as well as the prosecutors and judges at Nuremberg, tend to confuse the issue in suggesting a qualification of the criminality of aggres- sive war according to the brutality with which it is waged or its terrible consequences. No such distinctions are made by the count in the indict- ment charging the planning or waging of aggressive war. Acts of bru- tality and terrorism Were disposed of in the separate counts charging war crimes and crimes against humanity. As pointed out in the reviewer's article referred to, he believes that the proceedings and convictions at Nuremberg on those counts were legally justifiable. GEORGE A. FINcH Editor-in-Chief 1 War Criminals: Their Prosecution and Punishment, reviewed in this JouRxAL, Vol. 39 (1945), p. 358. 334

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