The Nuremberg Project is a special and unique section of the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion. It is the collection of scholarly articles analyzing and commenting on a particular document in The Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection. The Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion chooses one of the several thousand documents housed within the collection and then asks scholars to write a comment on the article. The scholar can be from any area of academia or the legal profession. It is the opportunity for collaboration between the historical document and modern thought that is exciting.
The Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection is housed at the Cornell University School of Law Library. The documents from the collection consist of nearly 150 bound volumes of Nuremberg Trial transcripts and other documents from the personal archives of General William J. Donovan, who served as special assistant to the Chief Counsel during the International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg. The tribunal was convened after World War II to hold the principal perpetrators of the atrocities of the war accountable for their actions. The Tribunal addressed four separate counts for each of the defendants: conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes (including genocide) and crimes against humanity. The tribunal lasted from November 21, 1945 to October 1, 1946. The collection contains evidentiary analyses prepared by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), trial briefs of various defendants, translations of Nazi orders and so much more. The collection is an incredibly rich assortment of documents that details the events of that time. The Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion is honored to be in partnership with Cornell not only to promote the collection, but to encourage debate.
By agreement, the Rutgers Journal of Law and Religion can choose any article with the collection to be used as the basis of scholarly debate. Then the journal editors will solicit comments from scholars based on the chosen article. Once complete, the scholarly articles shall be published on the journal website. Each set of articles is called an Installment and within each Installment, a link is provided to the base document that is housed at the Cornell Law Library. This grouping is done to encourage the reader to read the original, base article and then all the comments pertaining to it. This gives the reader the full effect of the written debate.
The educational and scholarly opportunities contained within the collection are innumerable. Even in today’s changing world, there are significant lessons to be learned from studying this history. We at the Journal of Law and Religion are excited to promote this debate and cannot wait to see the results!
For more information on the Nuremberg Project, please contact:
William “Bill” Olson, Nuremberg Editor
Rutgers Journal of Law & Religion
Rutgers Law School
217 North 5th Street
Camden, NJ 08102
weo10@scarletmail.rutgers.edu
For more information on The Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection, please visit their webpage at:
https://lawcollections.library.cornell.edu/nuremberg
Past installments are currently available on Westlaw & LexisNexis.