Telford Taylor

Telford Taylor (24 February 1908 – 23 May 1998) was an American lawyer and professor. Taylor was known for his role as lead counsel in the prosecution of war criminals after World War II, his opposition to McCarthyism in the 1950s, and his outspoken criticism of American actions during the Vietnam War.

Telford Taylor

With the US Army, Taylor served with the Military Intelligence Corps during WWII. He reached the rank of brigadier general in 1946, following the war. During the prosecution of Axis war criminals, he served as lead counsel for the prosecution in the 12 subsequent Nuremberg trials before US military courts, after serving as assistant to Robert H. Jackson in the initial trial before the International Military Tribunal.

Quotes

• The laws of war do not apply only to the suspected criminals of vanquished nations. There is no moral or legal basis for immunizing victorious nations from scrutiny. The laws of war are not a one-way street.
  • The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir

• To punish the foe — especially the vanquished foe — for conduct in which the enforcing nation has engaged, would be so grossly inequitable as to discredit the laws themselves.
  • Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy

Quotes about Telford Taylor

• If I was asked to name the person of my generation whom I most admired, I would promptly answer Telford Taylor. .. [W]ise counselor, persuasive advocate, careful scholar, all the qualities that signify distinction... were his in high degree.
  • Herbert Wechsler, law professor and member of the U.S. prosecution team at the Nuremberg Trials.^{[citation needed]}

• The human rights movement owes much of its legal foundation to the work of Gen. Telford Taylor....
  • The Nation magazine, 1995^{[specific citation needed]}

• For almost seven decades, from the days of FDR's New Deal through to the early 1990s, Taylor embodied the best of American legal liberalism. At least two generations of postwar Americans looked to him, as they did to no other lawyer, for tough, outspoken criticism of public affairs, from McCarthyism to the Eichmann trial or even the Vietnam War.
  • The New York Times^{[specific citation needed]}