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Pour qu’un héritage soit réellement grand, il faut que la main du défunt ne se voie pas. In 2014, a year of memorial ceremonies commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) marked its own twentieth year with the launch of a “legacy website.” With the closing of the Tribunal scheduled for December 2015, the question of its legacy had become increasingly pressing. The website premiered a video that “celebrates the accomplishments of the ICTR” in a “visually compelling” style. Blurring the distinction between documentary account and film trailer, the video begins with iconic images of the African continent: a boy rolling a hoop down a dirt road; laborers ferrying wares; women in colorful dresses tending children. These scenes of daily life are interrupted by images of men wielding machetes and corpses, interspersed with the figure of the radio, reminding the viewer that the 1994 genocide was encouraged through broadcasts inciting Hutus to take up arms against their Tutsi neighbors. The video lists the Tribunal’s contributions to international criminal law, but also describes a much broader impact: “a record of legal reform in Rwanda, and outreach, education, legal training, and healing.” Young boys leap into a body of water to punctuate the final term, suggesting the hope of a new Rwanda. The narrator proclaims, “today in Rwanda, it’s safe to listen to the radio again: the sound is of a nation rebuilding.” The film’s final words reach beyond the Rwandan context, affirming that ours is “a world pushing forward despite great imperfection, each day closer to a time when international law offers justice to all people, everywhere.”

Gerald Sandler (“Gerry”) was born and raised in the East End of London. He won a scholarship to the Middlesex School of Medicine, where he achieved many awards and the school’s gold medal. He met his wife, Ella, a trainee nurse, on a student attachment at the Whittington Hospital. After compulsory military service with the Royal Army Medical Corps based in Colchester, he completed his cardiology training in Sheffield and Leicester. He was appointed as a consultant in Barnsley in 1967, where he worked until he retired in 1992. He introduced the first mobile coronary care ambulance on the British mainland to Barnsley in 1970. He was an adviser on the Committee on Safety of Medicines and in later years undertook industrial tribunal work, assessing coal miners in the Yorkshire area. In retirement he travelled extensively and pursued his hobbies of ballroom dancing and woodwork. He was predeceased by Ella, some 16 months before his own death. He leaves four married sons, 10 grandchildren, and two great grandchildren, many of whom have followed him into healthcare professions.

This book provides a comprehensive legal analysis of the twelve war crimes trials held in the American zone of occupation between 1946 and 1949, collectively known as the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMTs). The judgments the NMTs produced have played a critical role in the development of international criminal law, particularly in terms of how courts currently understand war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. The trials are also of tremendous historical importance, because they provide a far more comprehensive picture of Nazi atrocities than their more famous predecessor, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (IMT). The IMT focused exclusively on the ‘major war criminals’ — the Goerings, the Hesses, the Speers. The NMTs, by contrast, prosecuted doctors, lawyers, judges, industrialists, bankers — the private citizens and lower-level functionaries whose willingness to take part in the destruction of millions of innocents manifested what Hannah Arendt famously called ‘the banality of evil’. The book is divided into five sections. The first section traces the evolution of the twelve NMT trials. The second section discusses the law, procedure, and rules of evidence applied by the tribunals, with a focus on the important differences between Law No. 10 and the Nuremberg Charter. The third section, the heart of the book, provides a systematic analysis of the tribunals' jurisprudence. It covers Law No. 10's core crimes — crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity — as well as the crimes of conspiracy and membership in a criminal organization. The fourth section then examines the modes of participation and defences that the tribunals recognized. The final section deals with sentencing, the aftermath of the trials, and their historical legacy.

After the electoral victories of 2015, PiS transformed the CT from an effective, counter-majoritarian device to scrutinise laws for their unconstitutionality, into a powerless institution paralysed by consecutive bills rendering it unable to review new PiS laws, and then into a positive supporter of the enhanced majoritarian powers. In a fundamental reversal of the traditional role of a constitutional court, it is now being used to protect the government from laws enacted long before PiS rule. Whatever else constitutional courts around the world are expected to do, there is no doubt that their first and primary function is to ensure adherence to a constitution and its protection against legislative majorities. In Poland, the Tribunal became a defender and protector of the legislative majority. This changed role, combined with general distrust of the CT and concerns about legitimacy of its judgments, explains also the extraordinary drop in the number of its judgments. For all practical purposes, the CT as a mechanism of constitutional review has ceased to exist: a reliable aide of the government and parliamentary majority has been born.