In the April *Atlantic Monthly* I raised doubts as to certain aspects of the then uncompleted Nuremberg trial. Since that time I have had a chance to profit from comments of Mr. Justice Jackson, Professor Sheldon Glueck, Professor Max Radin, Professor Lon Fuller, an anonymous contributor to the July, 1946, *Law Quarterly Review*, and other writers; I have also read reports of the trial and have studied a summary of the judgment. This further investigation has led me to resolve some of my earlier doubts, and I hope that if I state my own change of views I may contribute to the thinking of others who are concerned about the great questions raised by this trial.
The doubt which seemed to critics of the Nuremberg trial most fundamental was whether the defendants could properly be held to answer a charge that they had engaged in "the crime of aggressive war." Was there any such substantive offense?
Many who replied affirmatively contended that "the crime of aggressive war" was no different from the specific war crimes (such as killing a captured enemy civilian) that had been defined in the Hague Convention of 1907. That is, they argued that waging an aggressive war was a crime that had been outlawed by a specific treaty or treaties; and that individuals who engaged in such conduct, like individuals who engaged in the slaughter of captured civilians, were triable by any tribunal established for the occasion by a warring power, and were punishable by any penalty prescribed for the occasion by that power.