Shadows of Law, Shadows of the Shoah: Towards a Legal History of the Nazi Killing Machine

This review article discusses the emergence of the subsequent proceedings before the US Military Tribunals from the shadows of the trial of 'Major War Criminals' at the International Military Tribunal as explored in Kevin Jon Heller's The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law. The article applauds Heller's efforts in producing a detailed examination of an understudied aspect of the origins of international criminal law. The essay suggests that given the specific focus of the author on the genealogy of international criminal law, important legal historical questions are left unexamined. It suggests a research agenda that would focus more specifically on the centrality of the Shoah to National Socialism and argues that the current trend in historical scholarship focusing on war crimes trials as a distinct subject of inquiry could provide a fruitful basis for future socio-legal research into the Nazi state and its legal apparatus.