Introduction

I would like to start by violating at least one rule of traditional legal writing. That rule is that, in such writing, personal matters should not be discussed. I will begin with my personal recollection of Hilaire McCoubrey. We were both at Cambridge University (his alma mater) in the summer of 1997, attending a British Red Cross course on international humanitarian law. I was a PhD student in Nottingham, he was teaching the course in Cambridge. It was a beautiful evening, and we had finished for the day. Hilaire had been teaching the protection of the wounded, sick and shipwrecked. Owing to the felicitous weather, he and a few others (myself included) repaired to a local pub overlooking the river Cam. There we watched the sun set, refreshed ourselves, and talked at length over one of Hilaire's favourite subjects, the Nuremberg and Tokyo International Military Tribunals (IMTs), a subject about which he had prodigious knowledge and understanding. The fond memory I have of that evening, although now tinged with sadness, is how I like to remember Hilaire.

One of the issues raised at the Nuremberg IMT, superior orders, also provides the subject matter for my contribution to this volume. The defence of obedience to orders has been the subject of considerable attention by international lawyers. Hilaire put in his ‘two pennyworths’ late in his life. However, while some constitutional lawyers have discussed superior orders, domestic criminal lawyers have not on the whole spent much time on the defence (though it should be mentioned that Dinstein's work is sophisticated from a criminal law point of view).