Henry T. King
Encyclopedia
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
who served as a U.S. Prosecutor
Prosecutor
The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system...
at the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
in 1946-47. Late in his career, he became a law professor and an activist, writer, and lecturer working on international law
International law
Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...
and war crime
War crime
War crimes are serious violations of the laws applicable in armed conflict giving rise to individual criminal responsibility...
s; David M. Crane has described King as "the George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
of modern international law".
Life and work
King received his B.A. degree in 1941 from Yale CollegeYale College
Yale College was the official name of Yale University from 1718 to 1887. The name now refers to the undergraduate part of the university. Each undergraduate student is assigned to one of 12 residential colleges.-Residential colleges:...
, and his LL.B. in 1943 from Yale Law School
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...
(1943). A heart murmur
Heart murmur
Murmurs are extra heart sounds that are produced as a result of turbulent blood flow that is sufficient to produce audible noise. Most murmurs can only be heard with the assistance of a stethoscope ....
excluded him from military service during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. After practicing law for several years with the firm Milbank, Tweed & Hope, King became one of the United States prosecutors at the Nuremberg Trials, serving from 1946 to 1947. He was initially assigned to the prosecution of the German General Staff and the High Command, preparing cases against Walther von Brauchitsch
Walther von Brauchitsch
Heinrich Alfred Hermann Walther von Brauchitsch was a German field marshal and the Oberbefehlshaber des Heeres in the early years of World War II.-Biography:...
, Heinz Guderian
Heinz Guderian
Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was a German general during World War II. He was a pioneer in the development of armored warfare, and was the leading proponent of tanks and mechanization in the Wehrmacht . Germany's panzer forces were raised and organized under his direction as Chief of Mobile Forces...
, and Erhard Milch
Erhard Milch
Erhard Milch was a German Field Marshal who oversaw the development of the Luftwaffe as part of the re-armament of Germany following World War I, and served as founding Director of Deutsche Luft Hansa...
for trial before Nuremberg Military Tribunals
Subsequent Nuremberg Trials
The Subsequent Nuremberg Trials were a series of twelve U.S...
. Guderian was never tried, and von Brauchitsch died while awaiting trial. The Milch Trial
Milch Trial
The Milch Trial was the second of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S...
convicted Milch on two of three counts, and he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. King also worked on the Ministries Case and the Justice Case.
Following his service at Nuremberg, King had a long career as counsel for several corporations, including the TRW
TRW
TRW Inc. was an American corporation involved in a variety of businesses, mainly aerospace, automotive, and credit reporting. It was a pioneer in multiple fields including electronic components, integrated circuits, computers, software and systems engineering. TRW built many spacecraft,...
Corporation, from which he retired in 1981.
In the 1990s, King was a member of the American Bar Association
American Bar Association
The American Bar Association , founded August 21, 1878, is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. The ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of academic standards for law schools, and the formulation...
Task Force on War Crimes in the former Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
. He subsequently influenced the charter of the International Criminal Court
International Criminal Court
The International Criminal Court is a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression .It came into being on 1 July 2002—the date its founding treaty, the Rome Statute of the...
. When delegates from 131 nations established the criminal court in 1998, they did not initially include initiating wars of aggression as a war crime. With Whitney Harris and Benjamin Ferencz, two of the other prosecutors from Nuremberg, King traveled to the convention in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
to successfully lobby for the court's jurisdiction over the instigators of such wars. Michael Scharf described their role in Rome: "They used their moral authority; they were persistent, and ultimately the delegates included a reference to the crime of war of aggression in the court’s statute.”
As a part of preparing for the trial of Erhard Milch
Milch Trial
The Milch Trial was the second of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S...
in 1946, King interviewed Albert Speer
Albert Speer
Albert Speer, born Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer, was a German architect who was, for a part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
, one of the defendants who had been prosecuted at Nuremberg and convicted by the International Military Tribunal (the trial of the major war criminals). They later became friends. In 1997 King published a book with Bettina Elles, The Two Worlds of Albert Speer: Reflections of a Nuremberg Prosecutor. King wrote there that, "In a technological world, the magic concoction for evil consists of blind technocrats such as Speer led by an evil and aggressive leader such as Hitler."
King wrote more than 60 journal articles. From the mid 1980s until his death, King was a professor at Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...
School of Law
Case Western Reserve University School of Law
Case Western Reserve University Franklin Thomas Backus School of Law is the law school at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. It opened in 1892, making it one of the oldest law schools in the country. It was one of the first schools accredited by the American Bar Association and was...
, where he also served as the U.S. Director of the Canada-United States Law Institute. King also was a senior advisor to the Robert H. Jackson
Robert H. Jackson
Robert Houghwout Jackson was United States Attorney General and an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court . He was also the chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials...
Center in Jamestown, New York; Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.
King was interviewed for the 2006 BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
docudrama
Docudrama
In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....
Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial
Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial
Nuremberg: Nazis on Trial, is a BBC documentary film series consisting of three one-hour films that re-enact the Nuremberg War Trials of Albert Speer, Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess...
.
King was married for fifty years to the former Betty May Scranton. The
couple had three children: Suzanne Wagner, Henry T King III, who died
in 1993, and Dave King
Dave King (novelist)
Dave King is a novelist and poet who lives in Brooklyn, in New York City. He was born in 1955 in Meriden, Connecticut. His father, Henry T. King, was a U.S...
, a novelist.
Honors
In 2002, The University of Pittsburgh School of LawUniversity of Pittsburgh School of Law
The University of Pittsburgh School of Law was founded in 1895, and became a charter member of the Association of American Law Schools in 1900...
named King a Fellow honoris causa of the Center for International Legal Education. Also in 2002, King was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Laws by the University of Western Ontario
University of Western Ontario
The University of Western Ontario is a public research university located in London, Ontario, Canada. The university's main campus covers of land, with the Thames River cutting through the eastern portion of the main campus. Western administers its programs through 12 different faculties and...
. Mr. King was a guest of the government of The Netherlands on March 11, 2003, for the inauguration of the International Criminal Court at The Hague.
External links
- Henry T King Jr - Daily Telegraph obituary
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1gPOQHClcY - Henry T. King International Law Tribute Fund's Tribute to Henry T. King and his career.