ABSTRACT
The present chapter focuses on a brief but important period (i.e. 1945–1952) during which the US was the main supporter of the idea of individual criminal responsibility for aggression. The international community upheld this idea when many states approved the London Charter establishing the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. In 1946 the UN General Assembly adopted by consensus a resolution that reaffirmed the Nuremberg principles. This included recognition of individual criminal responsibility for Crimes against Peace as constituting customary law, and therefore binding on all states, irrespective of their treaty obligations. The chapter examines the US position at the London Conference whereby it was not necessary to define the crime of aggression in order to establish criminal responsibility for planning, initiating, launching or committing it. This notwithstanding, at the London Conference the US Representative, Robert Jackson, submitted a definition of aggression which had the very same wording, except one small difference, of article 3 of the UN General Assembly Resolution 3314 (1974). Special attention is also paid to the US position at the San Francisco Conference, where the Charter of the UN was indeed drafted and signed.
