Geoffrey Lawrence, Lord Biography

British judge Geoffrey Lawrence presided over the Nuremberg Trials. These trials of Nazi war criminals became the most important event in international law during the twentieth century. As president of the allied tribunal in 1945, Lord Justice Lawrence had a judge's traditional authority to direct the court, rule on evidence and motions, and interpret the law. Nuremberg, however, was unlike any court or any trial before it. Never before had multiple nations of the world put one nation's government officials on trial, let alone for such extraordinary and heinous crimes as those arising from the Holocaust.

Born in 1880, Lawrence had a distinguished legal career. He studied at Oxford University and was called to the bar in 1906 at the age of 26. Known for his eloquence and brilliant legal mind, he practiced law for twenty-five years before being appointed to the English judiciary. In 1932, he was made a judge of the High Court of Justice and, in 1944, a Lord Justice of Appeal.

Even before World War II ended, the Allies began making plans for the post-war treatment of Nazi leaders. U.S. officials successfully pushed to have them tried as criminals. In August of 1945, the Allies signed an agreement in London creating the International Military Tribunal (IMT) and decided to hold the trials in the city of Nuremberg where the German leader Adolf Hitler had held his huge annual rallies.

Each allied power supplied judges for the trials, Britain sending Lawrence. When it came time to elect a president, he was not an inevitable choice. Indeed, the post was coveted by others, among them the U.S. judge Francis Biddle. But hoping to avert criticism that the United States had too much influence over the trials, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson urged that a British jurist be chosen. In October, the American, British and French IMT judges elected Lawrence.

For his role presiding over twenty-one cases, Lawrence won international acclaim. As the trial opened he noted that it was historically unique, and he charged the participants to follow principles of fairness and justice. But he was no pushover: he swiftly established his authority on the second day by preventing the Nazi Reichsmarchall Hermann Goering from interrupting the trial to make a political statement.

More influentially and somewhat controversially, Lawrence refused to allow defense attorneys to argue that the Germans were merely guilty of the same offenses that their enemies had committed--in bombing cities, for instance. On October 1, 1946, he read the court's verdicts. Most of the defendants were convicted; eleven were sentenced to death by hanging. Following the Nuremberg Trials, Lawrence was appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary in the British justice system. He held the post from 1947 to 1949. He inherited the title Baron Trevithin from his brother, and among his honors was conferral of the title First Baron Oaksey in 1959.