On referring to the ‘Nuremberg principles’ under which 12 leading Nazis were sentenced to death, your reviewer (The Internationalists And Their Plan to Outlaw War) failed to mention one glaring weakness: these principles were only applied by judges from the winning side against defendants from the losing side. Not only were there were no allied names among the defendants, but also no ‘neutrals’ among the judges.

Take, for example, Nazi foreign minister Ribbentrop. One of the counts for which he was sentenced to death and hanged was for the crime of ‘planning a war of aggression’. What are the chances of Jack Straw suffering a similar fate? But where does this leave the impartial, even-handed rule of law if he does not?

Peter Bolwell

Hastings, East Sussex

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