NUERNBERG–Stroll into the justice palace in this beautiful city in Mittelfranken, ask to see Courtroom 600, and the nice, polite man at the reception desk will probably decline.

“Unfortunately not,” he said, “because it’s a functioning courtroom.”

The answer was no surprise, yet it was worth a try.

Courtroom 600 is the site of the post-World War II trials of national-socialist leaders in Germany.

The chief American prosecutor was Robert Houghwout Jackson, namesake of the Jamestown-based center.

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Eighty years after the opening of the trials in Nuernberg — a city whose name native-English speakers really would do well not to Anglicize — the Jackson Center and other organizations have kicked off a series of events commemorating the trials.

It’s worth remembering that such events were extraordinary in human history, and they didn’t come together by accident.

In the early years of World War II, allied leaders agreed that afterward national-socialist leaders in Germany should be tried. The allies finalized their plans in the summer of 1945, agreeing that the international tribunal would have one judge each from France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

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In retrospect, the irony of including the Soviet Union, birthplace of international socialism, among the organizers of the trial of national socialists is hard to miss.

You, faithful reader of this column, already understand that national socialists are similar to, not opposites of, international socialists. In short, both are socialist, atheist totalitarians.

Some on both sides of the Atlantic overlook that reality, partly because statists perpetuate their self-serving falsehood that national socialists are extreme versions of nonstatists, such as Western conservatives. Instead, national socialists–like international socialists–are extreme versions of statists. Nonstatists can’t, by becoming more nonstatist, become fascist any more than skinny people, by losing weight, can become obese.

Simply put, nazis and communists are both cut from socialist-atheist-totalitarian cloth.

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The Nuernberg trials took place from November 1945 to October 1946. Of the 22 individual defendants, three were acquitted, four were sentenced to prison terms of 10 to 20 years, three were sentenced to life in prison, and 12 received death sentences. The death sentences were carried out in October 1946 except as to the one defendant who took his own life.

In a report to President Truman afterward, Jackson said, “One of the chief obstacles to this trial was the lack of a beaten path.

A judgment such as has been rendered shifts the power of the precedent to the support of these rules of law.”

In other words, the Nuernberg trials provided “a beaten path,” thereby establishing “the precedent” for future trials based on “these rules of law.”

In the decades since, other such trials have taken place.

Such trials can be an important tool in the arsenal of the civilized world.

Are they a tool always to employ? Well, no. When to employ this tool will depend on the circumstances. Prosecutorial discretion, for example, will play a role in international law, just as it plays a role in civil enforcement and criminal prosecution of domestic law. Prudence will lead to passing on some international prosecutions regarding “these rules of law” so that the world can devote its attention to other matters.

Then there’s another knotty question: Who decides what “these rules of law” are and who should be prosecuted?

Anyone wondering whether these questions matter need look no further than the current labeling of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal for his leadership in defending his country following the surprise attack of Oct. 7, 2023.

To put it mildly, it’s more than reasonable to suspect that such labeling has roots in millennia-old hatred of Israel and millennia-old bigotry against Jews.

Besides, think of it this way: Was the second President Roosevelt a war criminal for his actions after Dec. 7, 1941? Was the second President Bush a war criminal for his actions after Sept. 11, 2001?

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As the Jackson Center celebrates its silver anniversary, it’s an understatement to say Chautauqua County is fortunate that the Jackson Center–high-quality gem that it is–chose Chautauqua County for its home.

The Jackson Center is, after all, the first equivalent of a presidential library for a Supreme Court justice.

To be sure, the Jackson Center has ways in which it can improve, particularly in its programming. It’s no secret that the primary one entails increasing diversity of jurisprudential and political thought. This would serve the center, the community, the nation, and the law well.

Yet that means that the high-quality gem that the Jackson Center is could use some more polish, not that it’s anything other than a high-quality gem.

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Before law school, Dr. Randy Elf was a teacher at Landheim Schondorf, a German-language boarding school in Schondorf am Ammersee, in Oberbayern.

(c) 2025 BY RANDY ELF