80 years after the birth of the international criminal law criterion for individual criminal accountability. Murray Bernays, the Statute of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, and the Joint Criminal Enterprise

Mario Martin Pereira Garmendia; Diego Alberto Zapata Gonzales · Revista Jurídica Digital UANDES (2026) · DOI: 10.24822/rjduandes.1001.1

Resumen

As the German National Socialist regime declined and Allied victory became likely, a policy was set to prosecute those responsible for its major atrocities. The same approach was applied to the Empire of Japan. It was only the genius of Murray Bernays (the true architect of International Criminal Law) that laid the dogmatic foundations on which this branch of criminal law is based, the purpose of which is the prosecution and punishment of international crimes (today: genocide, crimes against Humanity, and international aggression). As will be shown in this essay, these bases are, in essence, objective and subjective imputation of criminal liability, constituted following the parameters of specific legal institutes (of Anglo-Saxon roots): conspiracy, membership, and standard design Theory. On this basis, he established a model of imputation in two stages, the first associated with the civilian and military hierarchs of the regime and the legal entities created for the achievement of the criminal plan, and a second stage associated with the middle commanders and direct executors. All this gave rise to what we recognize today (mainly due to the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) as Joint Criminal Enterprise. Diving into the origins of this criterion of imputation will help to glimpse its intimate connection with the central typical figures of international criminal law, as well as the underlying preventive and repressive logic, consubstantial to its primary criminal norms.

Instituciones: Universidad San Ignacio de Loyola