Crimes Of Command

Crimes of Command illuminates the Navy's changed understanding of responsibility, accountability, and culpability from the end of World War II until today. From the ship that delivered the atomic bomb but lost 800 sailors to sharks, through Tailhook and the drunken debauchery that marked a generation of officers, to the 2017 Pacific Fleet collisions that took seventeen lives this story shows how the Navy's treasured ideal of accountability is a tradition without substance, a well-meaning concept romanticized by the inexperienced and used to maintain control over the Navy and it's heritage. This is the story of how one of the Nation's most revered institutions lost its way and the plan to get her back on track.

Why, when we have been largely socialized into good behavior, are there more laws that govern our behavior than ever before? Voted one of the best law books of 2021 by the UK Times. Levels of violent crime have been in a steady decline for centuries--for millennia, even. Over the past five hundred years, homicide rates have decreased a hundred-fold. We live in a time that is more orderly and peaceful than ever before in human history. Why, then, does fear of crime dominate modern politics? Why, when we have been largely socialized into good behavior, are there more laws that govern our behavior than ever before? In Command and Persuade, Peter Baldwin examines the evolution of the state's role in crime and punishment over three thousand years. Baldwin explains that the involvement of the state in law enforcement and crime prevention is relatively recent. In ancient Greece, those struck by lightning were assumed to have been punished by Zeus. In the Hebrew Bible, God was judge, jury, and prosecutor when Cain killed Abel. As the state’s power as lawgiver grew, more laws governed behavior than ever before; the sum total of prohibited behavior has grown continuously. At the same time, as family, community, and church exerted their influences, we have become better behaved and more law-abiding. Even as the state stands as the socializer of last resort, it also defines through law the terrain on which we are schooled into acceptable behavior.

This is the first comprehensive guide to the law of command responsibility. Originally invoked against Nazi leaders for failing to prevent or punish crimes of subordinates, and more recently in the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, command responsibility continues to be of importance in cases arising from the Iraq War and the War on Terror

This book offers an in-depth study of the command responsibility doctrine, pursuant to which military commanders and civilian leaders can be held responsible for the crimes committed by their subordinates that they failed to prevent or punish. This form of responsibility has gained much attention in the last years; however, it still presents several open questions and critical difficulties arise in its application. The author traces the roots of such criminal responsibility, from its military origins to its first appearances in international case law after World War II. Particular attention is given to the jurisprudence of the ad hoc Tribunals, which extensively elaborated on the issue, and to the provision of Article 28 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The book provides a systematic analysis of command responsibility, outlining its different forms and finding a proper role for it within the complex net of responsibilities that connotes the commission of international crimes. This book is an important contribution to the literature and worldwide discussion on command responsibility and therefore highly recommended to scholars of international law, criminal law and international criminal law as well as to all practitioners (judges, legal assistants, prosecutors, defence counsels) working at or with international tribunals, experts in the military field, investigators dealing with international crimes, NGOs and journalists. Chantal Meloni is working as a Researcher at the Criminal Law Department of the UniversitàdegliStudi of Milan, Italy. Since several years she specializes in international criminal law. She spent long research periods abroad, in particular at the Humboldt Universität of Berlin in Germany. She also worked at the International Criminal Court as a Legal Assistant in Chambers.

"I don't blame my executioners. I will pray God bless them. " So said General Tomoyuki Yamashita, Japan's most accomplished military commander, as he stood on the scaffold in Manila in 1946. His stoic dignity typified the man his U.S. Army defense lawyers had come to deeply respect in the first war crimes trial of World War II. Moments later, he was dead. But had justice been served? Allan A. Ryan reopens the case against Yamashita to illuminate crucial questions and controversies that have surrounded his trial and conviction, but also to deepen our understanding of broader contemporary issues-especially the limits of command accountability. The atrocities of 1944 and 1945 in the Philippines-rape, murder, torture, beheadings, and starvation, the victims often women and children-were horrific. They were committed by Japanese troops as General Douglas MacArthur's army tried to recapture the islands. Yamashita commanded Japan's dispersed and besieged Philippine forces in that final year of the war. But the prosecution conceded that he had neither ordered nor committed these crimes. MacArthur charged him, instead, with the crime-if it was one-of having "failed to control" his troops, and convened a military commission of five American generals, none of them trained in the law. It was the first prosecution in history of a military commander on such a charge. In a turbulent and disturbing trial marked by disregard of the Army's own rules, the generals delivered the verdict they knew MacArthur wanted. Yamashita's lawyers appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose controversial decision upheld the conviction over the passionate dissents of two justices who invoked, for the first time in U.S. legal history, the concept of international human rights. Drawing from the tribunal's transcripts, Ryan vividly chronicles this tragic tale and its personalities. His trenchant analysis of the case's lingering question-should a commander be held accountable for the crimes of his troops, even if he has no knowledge of them-has profound implications for all military commanders.

"This dissertation explores post-World War II United States Navy culture and how this culture addresses officers who have excelled sufficiently enough to rise to the pinnacle of professional assignment, the pillar of command of a U.S. Navy warship but also committed a crime of command."--Abstract.

This A-to-Z guide reveals--through case studies, definition of key terms, and legal explanations--what the public needs to know about war and the law.

This book provides the first 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 (NMT). The judgments these Tribunals produced have played a critical role in the development of international criminal law, particularly in terms of how courts currently understand genocide, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. The trials are of tremendous historical importance, because they provide a far more comprehensive picture of Nazi atrocities than the main Nuremberg Trial (IMT). The IMT focused exclusively on the 'major war criminals'-the Goerings, the Hesses, the Speers. The NMT, 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'. This book starts by tracing the history of the NMT. It then discusses the law and procedure applied by the NMT, with a focus on the important differences between Control Council Law No. 10 and the Nuremberg Charter and on the protection of the defendants' right to a fair trial. The third section, the heart of the book, provides a systematic analysis of the NMT's 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 of a criminal organization. This section also analyzes the general principles of liability that the Tribunals applied and on the defenses they did -and did not- recognize. The final section of the book deals with the aftermath of the trials and their historical legacy.

This book traces the evolution of crimes against humanity (CAH) and their application from the end of World War I to the present day, in terms of both historic legal analysis and subject-matter content. The first part of the book addresses general issues pertaining to the categorization of CAH in normative jurisprudential and doctrinal terms. This is followed by an analysis of the specific contents of CAH, describing its historic phases going through international criminal tribunals, mixed model tribunals and the International Criminal Court. The book examines the general parts and defenses of the crime, along with the history and jurisprudence of both international and national prosecutions. For the first time, a list of all countries that have enacted national legislation specifically directed at CAH is collected, along with all of the national prosecutions that have occurred under national legislation up to 2010.