THE SIGNIFICANCE OF “THE MEDICAL CASE” BEFORE THE UNITED STATES MILITARY TRIBUNAL I OF NUREMBERG FOR THE CRIMINAL LAW ASSESSMENT OF RESEARCH EXPERIMENTS
Małgorzata Gałązka
Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II , Polandhttps://orcid.org/0000-0002-9433-4356
Abstract
The article analyses the significance of the so-called “Medical Case” before the United States Military Tribunal I in Nuremberg from the perspective of criminal law. The object of this trial, which resulted with a judgment of 19th and 20th August 1947, was the criminal liability of perpetrators of experiments conducted in Nazi concentration camps. The legal qualification adopted in this judgment recognized these practices as a way of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has found continuation in the law of armed conflicts, although attempts to criminalize in international law the research exploitation of a human at a more extensive scope failed. The Nuremberg trial also demonstrated the inadequacy of classical institutions excluding the unlawfulness of an act to the research experiment. At the same time, it provided a basis for the development of specific conditions for the admissibility of medical research, grounded on the principle of primacy of the human being over collective interests.
Keywords:
human experimentation, Nuremberg Code, international criminal law, medical criminal law, state of necessityReferences
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Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9433-4356
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