Mon. 4/22: intro. and sects. I-III, pp. 35-51
Wed. 4/24: sects. IV-V, pp. 51-62
Fri. 4/26: sects. VI-VII, pp. 62-67
A glance at page numbers will show that these assignments are front-loaded. That is largely a consequence of the organization of this paper. Between the introductory paragraphs and the one-paragraph concluding §VII, the paper is divided into four parts. §I introduces two main issues via a discussion of the Nuremberg trials following WWII. This is followed by two pairs of sections, in which the authors present their position on these issues, in each case criticizing previous views before offering their own. Then §VI addresses several possible objections to their views. The first assignment carries us through the presentation of their views on the first issue, so it covers roughly half the paper; and the last assignment is devoted solely to the objections, so it includes only one substantial section.
• In §I Altnamn and Wellman move from two groups of questions regarding the Nuremberg trials—which they speak of as issues of “forum” and of “substantive criminal law”—to the issues of sovereignty and legality around which they organize their paper. These pairs of issues do not obviously match up one to one, and the transition from one pair to the other is effected by a discussion of a conception of sovereignty associated with the Peace of Westphalia (1648), a group of treaties which ended the Thirty Years’ War.
• The critical part of Altman and Wellman’s discussion of sovereignty, which appears in §II, centers on an “international harm principle.” Although the authors do not mention Mill, this principle is intended as an analogue for international law of his principle for ordinary criminal law. The authors’ own approach is presented in two stages in §III. The first (pp. 43-46) suggests, as an alternative to the Westphalian conception of sovereignty, a conception that bears some analogy to parental sovereignty within an ordinary legal order. In the second (pp. 46-51), they develop a criterion for limitations on sovereignty that elaborates the idea that the right to sovereignty is conditional upon an adequate protection of basic rights.
• Section IV is devoted to two sides of the issue of legality, with the authors arguing the difficulty of defending the Nuremberg trials and similar prosecutions against charges that they amount to ex post facto prosecution or violate the nullum crimen principle, which ties legal guilt to the existence of a law. The authors’ positive justification of international criminal law on this score is a defense of the prosecution of the legally innocent when there is sufficient moral guilt. (In this regard, you might recall the issue of the “grudge informers” in post-WWII Germany. Although these were cases under municipal rather than international law, they raise some of the same issues.)
• The authors consider several objections in §VI; I count five, appearing on p. 62, pp. 62f, pp. 63f, pp. 64f, and pp. 65f, respectively. You should ask yourself which of these objections seems the strongest and whether the authors’ reply to it is adequate.