Page 3

Parent Proposed Group Conference on International Criminal Law
Date 6 December 1946
Language English
Collection Tavenner Papers & IMTFE Official Records
Box Box 3
Folder General Reports and Memoranda from December 1946
Repository University of Virginia Law Library
2.The Research in International Law, Draft Convention on . . . Aggression, 33 A. J. I. L. 827 (1939); War Crimes Office, J. A. G. C., Compilation of Definitions on Aggression. . ., page 3 an Appendix IV: “Aggression is a resort to armed forces by a state when such resort has been duly determined, by a means which that state is bound to accept, to constitute a violation of an obligation.” 3.League of Nations, Committee on Security Questions, Draft Act (May 1933), page 221; War Crimes Office, J. A. G. O., Compilation of Definitions of Aggression . . . , Appendix VIIIa: (A general classification.) 4.Locarno Treaties: Shotwell, War as an Instrument of National Policy (1929) 59, War Crimes Office, J. A. G. O., Compilation of Definitions of Aggression . . . , page 1 and Appendix 1b and 1c: “If it is by some force and violence, by the exercise of that continuing barbarism which is war, then no matter what a nation’s claims may be, it proceeds to seek redress by the method of aggression; for aggression already has been defined for approximately half the civilized world in the Treaties of Locarno as the employment of force in the attainment of national purpose or the assertion of national claims . . . Perhaps the clearest way to state this point is that the definition of aggression, - that the aggressor is the Power which in going to war violates its already given pledge to settle its disputes peacefully instead, - erects a juristic frontier alongside the geographic one.” II.Definition of War Crime. The following definition is made up of legal elements stated in treaties or decisions and used in drafting the charges of war crimes, notably in the Yamashita case and other Pacific cases: A war crime is: (a)An Act (b)Not justifiable as a lawful act of war because committed with unlawful armed violence or reckless disregard of legal duty (c)Committed in any place -2-