Chapter

Then and now : command responsibility, the Tokyo Tribunal and modern international criminal law

Robert Cryer

Trials for international crimes in Asia

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016

p. 55-74

English

The doctrine of command responsibility first emerged at the trials of Yamashita Tomoyuki, Toyoda Soemu and the Tokyo Tribunal defendants after the Asia-Pacific War. In this chapter Robert Cryer shows that there are equally significant, but overlooked, appraisals of the command responsibility doctrine to be found within the dissenting judgments at the Tokyo Tribunal. These address, among other things, the problem of the various gradations of liability implicit with the doctrine. These doctrinal contributions should have informed later discussion on command responsibility, however they seem to have been mostly ignored by the ad hoc tribunals and later by drafters of the Rome Statute.

• Trials for international crimes in Asia / ed. by Kristen Sellars