# Verification workflow — Nuremberg + Tokyo The step-by-step procedure for verifying a Nuremberg or Tokyo citation before it appears in an output. ## The principle No case-specific citation appears in an output until it has been verified against an authoritative source in the current conversation. Foundational instruments (the London Agreement and IMT Charter, Control Council Law No. 10, MacArthur's Special Proclamation and the Tokyo Charter, UNGA Resolutions 95(I) and 177(II), the ILC 1950 Nuremberg Principles) may be cited from project knowledge when present. Everything else — passages of the IMT Judgment, NMT case holdings, the IMTFE Judgment, separate opinions at Tokyo, statements by counsel — is verified by retrieval. ## The fallback ladder For each case-specific citation, work down this ladder. ### For IMT and NMT citations: 1. **Avalon Project at Yale Law School** (`https://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/imt.asp`) — for IMT Charter, Indictment, Judgment, Jackson statements. The most accessible single point. 2. **Harvard Nuremberg Trials Project** (`https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/`) — for the deep corpus of IMT and NMT documents (~1 million pages, ongoing metadata expansion). Strongest on the twelve NMT cases. 3. **Stanford Taube Archive of the IMT** — for multilingual access (English / French / German / Russian) to the IMT corpus. 4. **Blue Series and Green Series digitisations** — Library of Congress, Internet Archive — for paginated citations. 5. **legal-tools.org** — for cross-reference and stable PDF. 6. **Tier 2** (Nuremberg Academy, USHMM, Robert H. Jackson Center) — for context and scholarship. 7. **Ask the user** if nothing verifies. ### For IMTFE citations: 1. **University of Virginia IMTFE Digital Collection** (`https://imtfe.law.virginia.edu/`) — the dedicated digital hub. The first point of entry for Tokyo. 2. **ICC Legal Tools Database** — IMTFE complete English transcripts and exhibits. Navigate: "Other International(ised) Criminal Jurisdictions" > "IMTFE". 3. **JACAR — Japan Center for Asian Historical Records** — IMTFE transcripts in English and Japanese. 4. **University of Hawaii at Manoa WCDI** (`https://manoa.hawaii.edu/wcdi/`) — for prosecution exhibits and the geographic distribution of war crimes. 5. **Pritchard-Zaide volumes** — for paginated citations to the published transcripts (Vols. 1-19 for proceedings, Vol. 20 for the Judgment, Vol. 21 for separate opinions). 6. **Hoover Institution IMTFE records** — for the 16-volume Narrative Summary and supporting materials. 7. **Peace Palace Library** — for the European research-guide framing. 8. **Tier 2 scholarship** (Totani, Boister-Cryer, Minear, Röling-Cassese) — for context and doctrinal reappraisal. 9. **Ask the user** if nothing verifies. ### For cross-cutting / Nuremberg Principles: 1. **UN Audiovisual Library** (`https://legal.un.org/avl/`) — for UNGA Resolutions 95(I), 177(II), and the ILC 1950 formulation. ## Capture these fields For every verified citation: - For Charter / Statute provisions: the article (and paragraph if applicable). Identify which Charter (IMT or Tokyo) and which article numbering scheme. - For the IMT Judgment: the volume and page in the Blue Series, or the Oxford ICL pinpoint. - For NMT cases: case name, tribunal number (I, II-A, III, etc.), date of judgment, Green Series volume. - For the IMTFE Judgment: the volume in Pritchard-Zaide (Vol. 20 for the Judgment, Vol. 21 for separate opinions), page, and **whose opinion** (majority Judgment vs Pal dissent vs Röling dissent vs Bernard dissent vs Webb separate vs Jaranilla separate). - For UNGA Resolutions: resolution number, UN Document number, date. - For the ILC Nuremberg Principles: Principle number and *ILC Yearbook* citation. - For defendant convictions: defendant, count or Class (IMT / IMTFE), disposition. ## Match the verification level to the claim - "Tojo was sentenced to death at Tokyo" → **existence verified** (any Tier 1 source confirms). - "The IMTFE held that aggressive war engaged individual criminal responsibility under existing international law" → **content verified** (the Judgment treats this question in substance). - A direct quotation from the IMT Judgment, the IMTFE Judgment, or Justice Pal's dissent → **page verified**. Never state a higher level than was actually reached. --- ## The four classic traps ### Trap 1 — IMT vs NMT The Einsatzgruppen Case, the Justice Case, the Doctors' Trial, IG Farben, the High Command Case — **these are NMT, not IMT**. They are subsequent proceedings under Control Council Law No. 10, with US Military Tribunals, not the four-power tribunal. Watch for: - "At Nuremberg, the IMT convicted the Einsatzgruppen leaders…" — wrong. The Einsatzgruppen Case is *United States v. Ohlendorf et al.*, an NMT case. - "The Justice Case at Nuremberg…" — that is NMT. - "The Doctors' Trial of the IMT…" — wrong, NMT. The fix: identify whether the trial in question is the IMT (four-power, 1945-46, 22 defendants, Blue Series) or the NMT (US-only, 1946-49, twelve cases, Green Series). Both happened at Nuremberg, but they are distinct. ### Trap 2 — Nuremberg vs Tokyo The IMT and the IMTFE are **parallel but distinct** institutions: - Different legal basis (London Agreement treaty vs MacArthur Special Proclamation) - Different defendants (22 European Axis leaders vs 25 Japanese leaders) - Different judges (4 vs 11) - Different sources (Blue Series vs Pritchard-Zaide) - Different terminology (counts 1-4 vs Class A/B/C) Watch for: - "The IMTFE held in *Tadić*…" — *Tadić* is ICTY, not IMTFE. - "The Nuremberg Tribunal in Tokyo held…" — wrong; the Tokyo tribunal is the IMTFE. - "The IMT Charter Article 5…" — the IMT Charter relevant article is Art. 6; Art. 5 is the Tokyo Charter equivalent. The fix: identify whether the source is the IMT (Nuremberg), an NMT case (Nuremberg, under CCL No. 10), or the IMTFE (Tokyo). ### Trap 3 — Charter terminology The IMT Charter uses **Article 6(a), 6(b), 6(c)**. The Tokyo Charter uses **Class A, Class B, Class C** under Article 5. The substance is parallel but the terminology is distinct. When citing the IMTFE, use Class A / B / C; when citing the IMT, use Article 6(a) / 6(b) / 6(c). Control Council Law No. 10 uses Article II(1)(a), (b), (c) — with the important divergence that II(1)(c) drops the armed-conflict nexus. ### Trap 4 — Majority Judgment vs separate opinions at Tokyo The IMTFE produced one majority Judgment **plus five separate opinions** (Pal, Röling, Bernard, Webb, Jaranilla). Pal's dissent in particular is famously cited — but it is **dissenting**, not the holding. Watch for: - "At Tokyo, it was held that the Tribunal lacked jurisdiction over crimes against peace because nullum crimen…" — that is the **Pal dissent**, not the majority. The majority Judgment **affirmed** jurisdiction over crimes against peace. - "The IMTFE held that the doctrine of crimes against peace was retroactive law…" — that is Pal again, or Röling on a specific subset; never the majority. The fix: when citing the IMTFE, identify whose opinion is being cited. If it is the majority Judgment, say "the Judgment of the IMTFE" or "the majority of the IMTFE". If it is a separate opinion, identify the judge. --- ## Translation discipline **Nuremberg.** The original trial proceeded in English, French, Russian, and German with simultaneous interpretation. The Blue Series was published in four language editions. The Stanford Taube Archive is the multilingual digital corpus. When quoting: - The English edition is conventionally treated as authoritative in Anglophone scholarship. - The French edition for Francophone scholarship. - Where the original speaker spoke German, the German edition may be needed for fidelity (e.g. for Streicher, Frank, Speer). **Tokyo.** The original trial proceeded in English and Japanese with simultaneous interpretation. The Pritchard-Zaide volumes are in English. The JACAR archive holds both English and Japanese transcripts. The English text is authoritative for international legal scholarship. In both cases, identify the language edition cited. ## Partial verification is acceptable if disclosed If you can confirm the existence and substance of a passage but not the page or volume, the honest output says so: *"The IMT Judgment characterised aggressive war as the 'supreme international crime' (the precise page in Blue Series Vol. XXII was not confirmed in this session)."* Disclosed partial verification is acceptable; silent overstatement is not. --- ## Reading the source document directly (the top of the ladder) The most reliable verification is reading the **actual document**, not a website's search snippet. Put this above everything else: **Rung 0 — work from the document itself when it is available.** Official tribunal sites frequently block automated fetching (HTTP 403), so a judgment can be public yet still unreachable by a direct fetch. Two ways to reach the text anyway: - **The user supplies it** — an uploaded PDF or pasted pages can be read directly, reaching paragraph-level verification. A practitioner working on a matter usually already holds the document; ask for it. - **A retrieval tool reads it** — where a document-retrieval tool or MCP server is available (one that fetches and extracts PDF text, with a fallback ladder), prefer it over a raw fetch. Only when the document cannot be obtained do you fall back to the search ladder above — and then you state the ceiling honestly. ## Site-search results are leads, not content A result from a site-search index — or a "synthesis" of search snippets — establishes at most that something **exists**. It is **never** content- or paragraph-level verification. Treat it as a lead to confirm against the document, and label it as such. Two recurring traps: - **Transliteration / OCR garbling.** Names and acronyms get corrupted (for example, an Arabic acronym surfacing as "KARA" where the source has "RADA/RADAA"). A name or acronym that appears only once in a snippet is a red flag — do not assert it. - **Relational claims.** Who is whose subordinate, associate, superior, or co-perpetrator is the detail a synthesis most often gets inverted. Never assert a relationship from a snippet; it requires the document.