Were the Nuremberg trials legal with respect to the US constitution? I'm very much a layman, and an Englishman rather than American, with an interest in political philosophy. I was reading through the US constitution the other day, and one sentence in Article I, Section 9 stood out to me: No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. With respect to ex post facto laws in particular, this made me wonder about the legality of the Nuremberg Trials. One of the key points made by the defendants at Nuremberg was that their transgressions - the mass killings, the conspiracies to wage wars of conquest, etc - were not crimes under German law at the time they were committed. The Nuremberg trials represented an uncomfortable fusion of American, British and Soviet law. To the best of my knowledge, there is no straightforward ban on ex post facto legislation within British law, although there is a vague consensus that such laws are unjust and are to be avoided. Whatever the articles contained within it, the Soviets in this period only seemed to treat their constitution as a set of guidelines and aspirations. But it strikes me as odd that the Americans would be willing to overlook such a clear ban, since they, more than any other nation, have tended to view their constitution as a kind of sacred text. I anticipate that one response to my question will be that the US constitution applies to domestic matters, and not to international law. This seems correct at first glance, until we read in Article I, Section 8 that one of the powers of Congress granted by the constitution is 'To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations'. But I'm sure that there are many layers of subtlety that I'm failing to grasp here, and I'd be grateful to anyone who could put me straight. I think I should close with the disclaimer that, in calling into question the legality of the Nuremberg trials, I don't intend to exonerate any of those who were convicted. They were certainly criminals in the moral sense of the word, and, putting questions of legality to one side, the world was better off without them in it. Regarding the matter of whether this question is a duplicate, I'll quote one of the comments below: The linked question is relevant, but not a duplicate. It briefly mentions the question of whether the trials operated under ex post facto laws, but devotes more space to other purported issues. None of the current answers address this issue. This should not be closed as a duplicate.
The US Constitution has no bearing on the Nuremberg Tribunals The tribunals were not conducted under US law, they were conducted under an international treaty going by the snappy title of No. 251 Agreement by the Government of the United Kindom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Government of the United States of America, the Provisional Government of the French Republic and the Government of the Union of Societ Socialist Republics for the Prosecution and Punishment of the Major War Criminals of the European Axis. This was signed for the United States on 8 August 1945 by Robert H. Jackson who later served as chief prosecutor on the tribunal. The laws of the United States allow three mechanisms for the US to join international treaties: treaties, congressional-executive agreements and executive agreements. I do not know what mechanism was used but AFAIK, no contemporary challenge was made that the US lacked the power to or hadn't properly acceded to the treaty. This is the extent to which US domestic law would be applicable. The US recognises that there are other laws and other courts than merely US ones and that their citizens may be subject to those laws and serve on those courts. Indeed, there are circumstances where US courts will apply foreign law to a case; when that happens US law applies to the procedure but the substantive law of the other jurisdiction is applied to the facts. There is no doubt that the legal basis of the Nuremberg Tribunal was suspect and controversial and this was recognised at the time as this April 1946 The Atlantic article demonstrates. However, there was never any doubt that US law (or UK, or USSR, or French law) was totally irrelevant. I suggest you ask a new question focusing on the role of &quot;Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law&quot; under international law.
Compliance with the Dutch Constitution is evaluated pre-enactment, rather than post-enactment as indicated below. The Dutch Constitution prohibits the courts from reviewing the constitutionality of Acts of Parliament. They are however obliged to assess whether statutory regulations are compatible with international treaties. The ban on constitutional review is laid down in the Constitution. This does not mean that this type of legislation is at no point reviewed in the light of the Constitution. This is in fact done during the preparatory stage by the bodies involved in enacting legislation (the Council of State in its advisory role, and the legislature, in other words, the government and both Houses of Parliament). It is first and foremost the responsibility of these bodies to ensure that no legislation is passed that is in conflict with the Constitution. From here. Also, keep in mind that most of the entrenched human rights protections in the Netherlands are via treaties associated with the Council of Europe, and the Dutch courts can determine if domestic laws violate international treaties (which Dutch law does not allow the Netherlands to abrogate unilaterally unless the treaty so provides). This makes the lack of judicial review far less interesting in the Netherlands than in the United States or many other countries (e.g. Canada or India), and it makes international law much more interesting. American constitutional law would not be much of a big thing if it were (1) stripped of its individual rights protections (2) was in a unitary state like the Netherlands, where the are no federalism concerns to protect, and (3) there is also not a constitutionally enshrined separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches, as there is in the U.S. You could teach a course on American constitutional law stripped of those issues in a week and the questions that are left would be much easier to evaluate in advance, rather than after the fact, since they would concern the legislative process for the most part. Institutional And Political Culture Matter This question is premised, to some extent, on the belief that judges act in one way that respects legal enactments, while other political bodies do not. But, this behavioral claim is not a universal one, it is a function of particular sets of institutional and political cultures. The legislative check also has more bite in the Netherlands because it is more of a "deliberative democracy" in terms of its political culture (i.e. decision-making relies more heavily on the substantive merits of legislation rather than ethic or partisan identity and seeks wide input) (the Netherlands ranks #9, the U.S. ranks #94). See internal pagination 91-93 of this report. The constitution's pronouncements are also more meaningful in the legislature because people act differently when they know there is no "safety net" from the courts to which they can pass the buck for ensuring compliance with the constitution. You see the same thing in the U.K. parliament which historically was not subject to any form of judicial review. The Council of State and its institutional norms, in particular, are a known quantity, because the Dutch Council of State has operated continuously since 1531 CE making it one of the oldest continuously functioning state institutions in the world. Likewise, Dutch judges, when applying the laws and treaties currently in force, are independent, and are arguably less partisan than U.S. courts. So, enforcing a binding treaty may have considerable power in the courts.
You may be mistaken about the purpose of the Miller test. If some content is obscene according to the Miller test, then it does not receive First Amendment protection, and could be prohibited from distribution by the government. However, it says nothing about the contractual obligations that two parties can agree to. To the extent that the obligations themselves are objectionable this analysis would fall under the doctrines of unconscionability and public policy.
The question largely does not come up in the US, but it does in some officially bilingual jurisdictions such as Canada. If someone ventures to paraphrase law of the US into Farsi or Spanish, that could be a kind act on their part, but it has no official status: only the law as enacted has legal weight. Though India is officially multilingual in many ways, acts of parliament must be in English – the English version is authoritative, even though translations may be made. In Canada, both English and French versions are official; so in the case of R. v. Collins, [1987] 1 SCR 265, a conflict is detected: The French version of the text, which translates could bring the administration of justice into disrepute, is less onerous than the more stringent English version, "would bring the administration of justice into disrepute", and consequently is preferable in that it better protects the right to a fair trial (invoking a separate principle of interpretation, lenity, in case of ambiguity). There is some indication that EU directives can be translated after the fact, so that the 1979 Wild Birds Directive was translated from English into Slovak some years later. In the case of the EU, the Directorate-General for Translation shoulders that responsibility.
No Any such law would violate the US First Amendment as an improper restriction of speech and of the press. If done by the court rather thiygh a law, it would also conflict with 17 USC 105 which says that: Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government Courts have restricted video and still photography of court proceedings, on the ground that the presence of cameras would disturb court sessions and distract witnesses and jurors. But that would not apply to the proceedings of an appellate court.
The United States would be one such country. I'm sure it is not the only one. In the case of countries with constitutional courts there is basically no one to second guess their interpretations which is also true when the apex court in a country provides an opinion. Since no one can overrule many of these courts, they are allowed to do what they want.
I presume that Dad will check with the college attorneys, so this is for information purposes only. Smith v. Daily Mail 443 U.S. 97 concerns a newspaper which published the name of a minor arrested for allegedly murdering someone (having legally obtained that information). SCOTUS held that The State cannot, consistent with the First and Fourteenth Amendments, punish the truthful publication of an alleged juvenile delinquent's name lawfully obtained by a newspaper. The asserted state interest in protecting the anonymity of the juvenile offender to further his rehabilitation cannot justify the statute's imposition of criminal sanctions for publication of a juvenile's name lawfully obtained There was a state law prohibiting a newspaper from publishing a minor's name involved in a criminal proceeding – it specifically singled out newspapers, hence the holding includes the mention of newspapers, but the footnotes in the case indicate that they "don't need to go there" (the equal protection question was unanswered), because "First Amendment rights prevail over the State's interest in protecting juveniles". The First Amendment right would be the same, applied to video, and classroom use.
I don't think there would be such a case. The Supreme Court itself does not allow cameras in its courtroom. Also, when Florida wanted to bring cameras into Florida courtrooms, the Supreme Court said in the 1981 case Chandler v. Florida: Absent a showing of prejudice of constitutional dimensions to these defendants, there is no reason for this Court either to endorse or to invalidate Florida's experiment. It's also worth noting that "the jury may not be filmed" and "The Florida Supreme Court has the right to revise these rules as experience dictates, or indeed to bar all broadcast coverage or photography in courtrooms" were two of the specific rules that the Supreme Court noted Florida had implemented. Although those particular rules were not at issue in this case, the Court made no further mention of them, and thus perhaps tacitly approved of their constitutionality. Given that there does not seem to be a general right to film in a courtroom, it seems unlikely that there would be a right to film jurors in particular. Furthermore, this page lists the courtroom camera rules for several states. In many of them, filming jurors is prohibited. Presumably, if there was a ruling that this was unconstitutional, they wouldn't have those rules.