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 Richard J. Goldstone is a justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, which has been trusted with the task of interpreting the new South African Constitution and supervising the country’s transition into democracy. In this clip from a Facing History and Ourselves panel discussion, Justice Goldstone talks about the important legal precedent established with the Nuremberg trials.
Transcription of video clip:
“I think the most important legacy of the Holocaust is the state that international law is in today. It wouldn’t have been, but for the Nuremberg trials. There wasn’t such a thing as genocide Nobody conceived of a crime of that nature. There wasn’t such a thing as “crimes against humanity.” That wasn’t the first time the expression had been used, but it was the first time it had been given legal meaning and content….
“Something brand new, too, since the Holocaust, is universal jurisdiction: the idea that for huge crimes what determines the jurisdiction of the domestic court is not where the crime was committed, but the nature of the crime itself.
“We are able to talk about this issue. If Churchill had got his initial way, and the Nazi war criminals had been lined up against a wall and summarily executed, there wouldn’t have been a Pinochet extradition in London. We wouldn’t have Milosevic standing trial in The Hague. You wouldn’t have had the former prime minister and leaders in Rwanda being found guilty of genocide. You wouldn’t have systematic mass rape being recognized as an international war crime.
“I’m not pessimistic, incidentally. I think humankind is learning. We are developing new tools, and we have to use them and educate people to understand them and use them.”
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