The International Nuremberg Principles Academy hosted an illustrated public lecture by Professor Gerry Simpson titled “One Hundred Years of Turpitude: A Century of War Crimes Trials”, on Monday 9 September 2019. The lecture took place at the historic Courtroom 600 of the Nuremberg Palace of Justice at 6pm.
Professor Gerry Simpson discussed war crimes trials, which took place in the 20th Century at both national and international levels. He traced the origins of international criminal law in five constitutional moments: at Versailles in 1919, in Moscow in the mid-thirties, at “Tokyoberg” (the dual moment of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials) between 1945 and 1948, in Jerusalem in 1961, and in New York at the United Nations Security Council in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. The talk was followed by a discussion with the audience moderated by Dr. Viviane Dittrich.
Gerry Simpson is a Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He previously taught at the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University. He is the author of Great Powers and Outlaw States (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Law, War and Crime: War Crimes Trials and the Reinvention of International Law (Polity Press, 2007). His recent publications include The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials (ed. with Kevin Heller) (Oxford University Press, 2013); Beyond Victor’s Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial Revisited (ed. with Yuki Tanaka and Tim McCormack) (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2011) and Who’s Afraid of International Law (ed. with Raimond Gaita) (Monash University Press, 2017).
The lecture was held in English.