At Nuremberg, the world made a radical promise: political power would no longer be a complete shield against responsibility for mass atrocity. The promise changed international law—but it never became simple, universal, or evenly enforced.

The Nuremberg System traces the story from the 1945–46 trials to the institutions and controversies that define international criminal justice today. Hammed Putlov explains the Nuremberg Principles, genocide and crimes against humanity, the Tokyo Tribunal, Eichmann and Pinochet, the tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the International Criminal Court, humanitarian intervention, the War on Terror, and the modern accountability debates surrounding Ukraine, Palestine/Israel, and Syria.

Written for readers who want both history and legal clarity, the book separates allegations from judgments, jurisdiction from guilt, and moral outrage from the legal tests courts actually apply. It also confronts the central problem that has followed international justice from the beginning: rules may be universal in language while enforcement remains dependent on states, institutions, and unequal power.

The result is not simply a history of one famous trial, but an anatomy of the system that came after it—and a framework for asking whether international law truly applies the same rules to everyone.