Revisiting Röling and Cassese’s Appraisal of the Tokyo Tribunal

In late 1977, Antonio Cassese interviewed Bernard Röling about his experiences as a judge at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and his career after that. The resulting book, The Tokyo Trial and Beyond: Reflections of a Peacemonger, was published in 1993. It not only offered an insider’s account of the politics and personalities that shaped the Tokyo tribunal but also addressed associated issues – strategies for disarmament, the definition of aggression, the limits of self-determination – that would exercise international actors over the ensuing decades. In the process, it revealed much about the perspectives and occasional foibles of two innovative and outward-looking jurists whose work was nonetheless rooted in, and sometimes constrained by, European legal approaches to peace and justice.