A. Matwijkiw / International Criminal Law Review 8 (2008) 713–718 713 A Very Meaningful Anniversary David A. Blumenthal, Timothy L.H. McCormack (eds.), Te Legacy of Nurem- berg: Civilising Influence or Institutionalised Vengeance? , Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Leiden, 2008, xxvi + 338 pp. Although the editors’ main motivation for the book is to mark the 60th anniver- sary of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) at Nuremberg, they use the special occasion as a springboard for thought-provoking analysis and critical assessment. It is a celebration with a serious agenda. Te seventeen contributing authors, of which sixteen are from the academic and/or professional areas of law and one is a journalist, regard the IMT, citing the words of Rt. Hon. Sir Ninian Stephen, as a “profoundly significant historical event” while, at the same time, acknowledging the need for detached observation and reflection with a view to comparing the past and present justice equations. Te common denominator is the authors’ sincere human rights advocacy paired with common sense realism, which can be difficult to distinguish from philo- sophical skepticism when it comes to Te Evolutionary Judgment: has interna- tional humanitarian law and international criminal law advanced sufficiently to make it true to say that the implied substantive norms, formal procedures and measures of protection that the relevant bodies of norms provide for are now what they should be? If not, does this perhaps owe to one or more wrong variables in the justice equation of the past? As pointed out by Michael J. Kelly and Timothy L.H. McCormack in their excellent and insightful essay, Te Nuremberg Trial and the Subsequent Development of International Law, Winston Churchill was in favor of summary executions of the Nazi leaders in 1945, and while his preference (which he incidentally shared with Joseph Stalin) was made to give way to a trial by law, to one step forward in one sense at least, in another sense the very same step came under attack as an actual violation of, inter alia, the fundamental prin- ciple nullum crimen sine lege. - Only one conclusion seems certain. Te judg- ment of the past cannot be simplistic. Furthermore, putting the development of international law under the microscope while extending the analysis to the US-Iraq experience in our own modern era, Kelly and McCormack lament the “blatant disregard for the lessons from Nuremberg” (p. 128). It is not merely the temporal aspect that facilitates the qualitative leap from a primitive and unlawful stage to one of principled respect. Undoubtedly, this is the kind of discovery that makes the book much (much!) more than an attempt to restate the historical facts surrounding the legacy of the IMT. Furthermore, posing the challenging question “Civilising Influence or Institutionalised Vengeance?” the seventeen authors are not just in pursuit of © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI 10.1163/157181208X360611