These two books mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Nuremberg tribunal, but with the trial of Saddam Hussein dragging on in Iraq they could hardly be more topical. The issue of the responsibility of leaders for the crimes of their regimes has, far from being buried with the crack of the last Nazi neck in the Nuremberg noose, arisen again in Rwanda, Bosnia, and now in Iraq.

The Nuremberg trials established the principles of modern international human-rights law, introducing such novel notions as 'war crimes' and 'crimes against humanity'. Considering their emblematic importance, it is extraordinary how casually they