May 11, 1971

Telford Taylor, professor of law at Columbia University, and Richard A. Falk, professor of international law at Princeton University, gave the Barbara Bailey Brown Lecture, entitled, “War Crimes: Who is to be Judged by Whom?” Both international lawyers, Taylor was a prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials and Falk wrote critically about the war in Vietnam.

“Although both speaker reached similar conclusions,” Jon Plehn ’73 wrote in The Miscellany News, “their approaches focused on two different planes. Taylor concentrated on the legal aspects of war crimes, declaring that ‘The limits of war have a moral and practical base’…. [He] continued by saying that a major function of [a] tribunal would be to make the public aware of war crimes such as those occurring the Vietnam.” Professor Falk, the reporter said, “argued on a moral level,” decrying “the pushing of the elite into roles of such technocratic natures that the moral view is lost…. Inevitably Falk’s argument hit upon the same solution as Taylor’s, that of establishing an international penal code and tribunal for war crimes. On a short term attempt at political reeducation both speakers suggested the instigation of impeachment proceedings of President Nixon. Taylor hoped that this would alter the political awareness of the public and Falk, believing the public to be well-informed on the moral and practical problems of warfare, hoped for an increase in the political awareness of the elite.”

The Miscellany News