On the law of war and peace: from Hugo Groot (Grotius) to Nuremberg and Tokyo

Purpose. To explore the theoretical and legal foundations of the law of war and peace and their practical implementation in the activities of the international military tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo as new exclusive forms of modern justice.

Theoretical basis. The historical time of Hugo Grotius's life and the Nuremberg and Tokyo International Tribunals have already gone down in history, but the deep connection of these events is an indicator of the fate of brilliant ideas that have not lost their outstanding significance for centuries, not only for their direct content, but also for the ways of thinking that generate them, which are the subject of independent serious research. Concern for the fate of humanity, which permeates both the scientific work of Hugo Groot (Grotius), as well as the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, unite these two widely separated events today. The unity of these events, in short, lies in the fact that Hugo Groot (Grotius) gave a thorough theoretical knowledge of the law of war and peace, based on all previous historical experience of its formation and knowledge, and the Nuremberg and Tokyo International Tribunals were the first practical embodiments of this knowledge.

Results. The natural law foundations of the activities of the International Military Tribunals in Nuremberg and Tokyo have been identified, and the transformation of natural law into positive law in new international legal documents has been analyzed. The inconsistency of the "right" of force, the "right" of conquest, the main content of the law of war and peace in the work of G. Groot (Grotius) "On the law of war and Peace" is revealed. The article reveals the features of international normative regulation of issues of war and peace in the post-war period, including the practice of exclusive justice, carried out on the basis of treaties and agreements between states to ensure the operation of natural law by identifying it and including it in a new positive law.

Conclusions. The current normative legal acts of positive law at the time of the commission of war crimes by German Nazism did not fully cover the crimes they committed that violated natural human rights: the right to life, the right to security, the right to property. These gross violations of natural law as a right of direct action have been expanded into crimes in the charters of International Military Tribunals: crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity. For the first time in the history of mankind, the Nazi state and a political party and their leaders were convicted in accordance with the procedural rules of justice in force in the advanced countries of Europe.

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