War crime: References & Edit History
More Articles On This Topic
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Additional Reading
General overviews of war crimes include George Creel, War Criminals and Punishment (1944); Leon Friedman (ed.), The Law of War: A Documentary History, 2 vol. (1972); Donald A. Wells, War Crimes and Laws of War, 2nd ed. (1991); Lawrence Weschler, A Miracle, a Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990, reissued 1998); Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence (1998); Aryeh Neier, War Crimes: Brutality, Genocide, Terror, and the Struggle for Justice (1998); and Richard Goldstone, For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator (2000). War crimes against women are treated in Kelly Dawn Askin, War Crimes Against Women: Prosecution in International War Crimes Tribunals (1997).
The war crime tribunals in Nürnberg and Tokyo are discussed in Richard H. Minear, Victors’ Justice: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial (1971, reissued 2001); Robert E. Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (1983); John L. Ginn, Sugamo Prison, Tokyo: An Account of the Trial and Sentencing of Japanese War Criminals in 1948, by a U.S. Participant (1992); Telford Taylor, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir (1992); Joseph E. Persico, Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial (1994, reissued 2000); Irwin Cotler (ed.), Nuremberg Forty Years Later: The Struggle Against Injustice in Our Time (1995); and Arieh J. Kochavi, Prelude to Nuremberg: Allied War Crimes Policy and the Question of Punishment (1998).
Discussion of the Rwanda and Yugoslavia UN war crimes tribunals can be found in Virginia Morris and Michael P. Scharf, An Insider’s Guide to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: A Documentary History and Analysis, 2 vol. (1995); M. Cherif Bassiouni and Peter Manikas, The Law of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (1996); Karine Lescure and Florence Trintignac, International Justice for Former Yugoslavia: The Working of the International Criminal Tribunal of The Hague (1996; originally published in French, 1994); and Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1998, reprinted 2000).
Article Contributors
Primary Contributors
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Mary Margaret Penrose
Associate Professor of Law, University of Oklahoma, Norman.
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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors.
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Article History
| Type | Description | Contributor | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Article title updated for style. | Nov 04, 2026 | ||
| Invalidated site: United States Institute of Peace - Genocide, Crimes against Humanity, and War Crimes. | Sep 21, 2026 | ||
| Add new Web site: Oxford Public International Law - War Crimes. | Sep 18, 2026 | ||
| Add new Web site: Lieber Institute West Point - Talking About War Crimes. | Jan 23, 2026 | ||
| Add new Web site: International Humanitarian Law Databases - Definition of War Crimes. | Dec 10, 2025 | ||
| Add new Web site: Digital Commons at American University Washington College of Law - War Crimes: History, Basic Concepts, and Structures (PDF). | Oct 02, 2025 | ||
| Add new Web site: University of Southern California Dornsife - What is a war crime? A former U.S. State Department foreign affairs officer provides a primer. | Apr 25, 2025 | ||
| Link added. | Feb 19, 2025 | ||
| Add new Web site: Loyola University Chicago - School of Law Research - LAW eCommons - Expanding Past Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, and War Crimes: Can an ICC Policy Paper Expand the Court's Mandate to Prosecuting Environmental Crimes? (PDF). | Jan 30, 2025 | ||
| Add new Web site: CORE Reader - What is a War Crime? | Oct 22, 2024 | ||
| Add new Web site: Congress.gov - Congressional Research Service - War Crimes: A Primer. | Sep 09, 2024 | ||
| Add new Web site: United States Institute of Peace - Genocide, Crimes against Humanity, and War Crimes. | Jun 26, 2024 | ||
| Add new Web site: Pace University Digital Repository - War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. | Jun 19, 2024 | ||
| Add new Web site: NPR - What is a war crime, and who gets held accountable? Here's what you need to know. | Mar 29, 2024 | ||
| Add new Web site: Al Jazeera - Explainer: What is a war crime? | Jan 08, 2023 | ||
| In the last sentence of the article, changed “2016” to “2019” and “some 120” to “more than 120.” | May 03, 2022 | ||
| Add new Web site: TRIAL International - War Crimes. | Oct 24, 2019 | ||
| Media added. | Dec 26, 2018 | ||
| Add new Web site: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - Holocaust Encyclopedia - War Crimes Trials. | May 03, 2017 | ||
| Updated the number of countries that have ratified the International Criminal Court statute through 2016. | Dec 22, 2016 | ||
| Media added. | Jun 09, 2015 | ||
| Add new Web site: British Broadcasting Corporation - War Crime. | May 26, 2011 | ||
| Changed "The Netherlands" to "the Netherlands." | Sep 03, 2010 | ||
| Article revised. | Jun 23, 2005 | ||
| Article revised. | Feb 19, 2004 | ||
| Article revised. | May 10, 2002 | ||
| Article added to new online database. | Jul 20, 1998 |