On October 4, SUNY Buffalo Law School will have three law professors -- John Barrett of St. Johns, Mary Dudziak of Southern California, and my colleague Eric Muller -- speak on the sixty-fifth anniversary of a talk given by Justice Robert Jackson at Buffalo. They will return to the theme of Jackson's address -- which he gave as he was returning from the Nuremberg trials, where had served as prosecutor. Cribbing now some from the Buffalo Law press release, Jackson's speech "touched on timeless themes: how a 'warlike spirit' can overcome a nation; the quest for nations to work cooperatively in the cause of peace; the interrelationship of war and dictatorship; and the supremacy of law over the lawless forces of war and persecution." Barrett will speak about “Bringing Nuremberg Home: Justice Jackson’s Path Back to Buffalo, Oct. 4, 1946.” Dudziak will speak on “Rumors of War,” and Muller will speak about “Nazis, Americans and the Law as a ‘Peace Profession.’”
And continuing from the press release:
“What is most remembered about Jackson at Nuremberg is his famous opening statement and his almost equally famous closing argument,” notes UB Law Professor Alfred S. Konefsky, a legal historian who has helped to organize the Mitchell lecture. “They’re two extraordinary documents of the 20th century. What has been lost to history is this speech he made in a matter of days after returning from Germany to the United States. He made the speech on a Friday, then took a train to D.C. so he could be in place when the Supreme Court convened on the first Monday in October, which was Oct. 7.”
The words Jackson spoke at UB that day, Konefsky says, had a personal edge. “It’s an extraordinary speech, quite a powerful speech, because it’s the first time he expressed in public what the meaning of the Nuremberg experience was to him. It’s a distillation and a reflection of what he experienced.”
Jackson’s speech, Konefsky says, was broadcast live on radio and The New York Times ran a front-page story about it the next day, as well as the full text of the address. Despite that coverage at the time, Konefsky says, “This speech has been largely forgotten. The Mitchell lecture is an attempt not only to commemorate the event, but also to reintroduce it into historical memory.”
This looks like it's going to be a super discussion. Here's the poster announcing the lectures.
Al, thanks for mentioning this! My title, "Rumors of War," comes from Jackson's 1951 Mitchell Lecture, "Wartime Security and Liberty Under Law." He describes the national security environment in 1951 this way:
"We can no longer take either security or liberty for granted. The best that we
can now hope for seems to be a prolonged period of international tension and
rumors of war, with war itself as the ever threatening alternative...I see not
the slightest probability in the foreseeable future that any conqueror can impose
oppression upon us, and the dangers to our liberties which I would discuss with
you are those that we create among ourselves."
The idea of rumors or threats of war, rather than war itself, is so resonant with other writing at the time, perhaps beginning with Orwell's reflection on the atomic bomb -- that it would lead to an era of "a peace that will be no peace." So I will attempt to place Jackson's writings on security and civil liberties in that murky war-but-not-war cultural context.
Here's Jackson's speech: http://www.roberthjackson.org/files/theman/speeches-articles/files/wartime-security-and-liberty-under-law.pdf
Posted by: Mary Dudziak | September 05, 2011 at 02:05 PM