New Labour bring old Nuremberg Laws to Britain

huh

"The Nuremberg trials where unique in that they created new laws that where not in place when the acts/crimes where carried out, so they where retrospective, which is always illegal and just plain wrong"

Nope - Mike Richards above you is correct. The Nuremburg laws (1935) were about racial purity, "miscegenation" etc. The important part of the Nuremburg trials (1945/6) was about individual criminal responsibility in international law and "I was only obeying orders [of a sovereign]" being inadequate as a defence *in international law*.

Retrospectivity of the was-it-invented-on-the-spot-or-wasn't-it charge of Crimes Against Humanity was not actually a particularly pressing issue for those defendants and neither is it particularly relevant to stop and search. Also, while the US has a constitutional prohibition on retrospective laws, in the UK parliament is sovereign and retrospective laws are legal.

In any case, the principle of legality (that the government cannot legalise its servants' breaking the law just by ordering them to) has bugger all to do with Nuremburg and goes back much further than WW2. Entick v Carrington is a 1765 English case that deals with similar territory: a government official cannot instruct his servants to search a private house without legal authority. There are probably even older cases that can be found...

This would have been a good article to have El Reg's partners from Out-Law/Pinsent Mason comment on, instead of their usual inane commentary on cases in the US where they have no experience or expertise...