International law and the Holocaust

The author argues that the Holocaust had at least one good outcome: following the Nuremberg Trials (1945) the scope of international law widened to include "crimes against humanity." However the Nuremberg proceedings failed to specifically isolate the crime of genocide. The promulgation of the UN Charter in 1945 followed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 marked the start of modern international human rights law. The final step in this process was the foundation of the International Criminal Court in 2002.