Hartley Shawcross

Shawcross's advocacy before the Nuremberg Trial was passionate. His most famous line was: "There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience".

He avoided the crusading style of American, Soviet and French prosecutors. Shawcross's opening speech, which lasted two days, the 26 and 27 July 1946, sought to undermine any belief that the Nuremberg Trials were victor's justice (an exacted vengeance against defeated foes). Instead, he focused on the rule of law and demonstrated that the laws that the defendants had broken, expressed in international treaties and agreements, were those to which prewar Germany had been a party. In his closing speech, he ridiculed any notion that any of the defendants could have remained ignorant of the thousands of Germans exterminated because they were old or mentally ill. He used the same argument for the millions of other people "annihilated in the gas chambers or by shooting" and maintained that each of the 22 defendants was a party to "common murder in its most ruthless forms".[7][8]

Thus, Shawcross's advocacy was instrumental in obtaining convictions against the remaining Nazi leadership on grounds that were perceived as fair and lawful.

As Attorney-General, he prosecuted William Joyce ("Lord Haw-Haw") and John Amery for treason, Klaus Fuchs and Alan Nunn May for giving atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, and John George Haigh, known as 'the acid bath murderer'.

From 1945 to 1949, he was Britain's principal delegate to the United Nations and was involved in the official adoption of the UN flag in 1946,[9] but he was recalled in 1948 to lead for the government's interest at the Lynskey tribunal. In 1951, he briefly served as President of the Board of Trade until the Labour government's defeat in the election of that year.

Shawcross left his name to a Parliamentary principle, in a defense of his conduct regarding an illegal strike, that the Attorney-General "is not to be put, and is not put, under pressure by his colleagues in the matter" of whether or not to establish criminal proceedings.[10][11]

Shawcross ended his law career in 1951, the same year as the defeat of the second Attlee ministry. He was expected to become a Tory, earning him the nickname "Sir Shortly Floorcross" but instead he remained true to his Labour roots.

During the committal hearing for the suspected serial killer doctor John Bodkin Adams in January 1957, he was seen dining with the defendant's suspected lover, Sir Roland Gwynne (Mayor of Eastbourne from 1929–31), and Lord Goddard, the Lord Chief Justice, at a hotel in Lewes.[12] The meeting added to concerns that the Adams trial was the subject of concerted judicial and political interference.

Shawcross resigned from Parliament in 1958, saying he was tired of party politics.

Shawcross was made one of Britain's first life peers on 14 February 1959 as Baron Shawcross, of Friston in the County of Sussex,[13] and sat in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.

In 1961 he was appointed the chairman of the second Royal Commission on the Press. In 1967 he became one of the directors of The Times responsible for ensuring its editorial independence. He resigned on being appointed chairman of the Press Council in 1974. From 1974 to 1978 he was chairman of the Press Council and is described as "forthright in his condemnation both of journalists who committed excesses and of proprietors who profited from them" and as a "doughty defender of press freedom".[14]

From 1947 to 1960 he was the owner of Vanity V, a 12-metre class racing yacht designed by William Fife to the Third International Rule, built in 1936, which he kept at his home in Cornwall.[19] A later skipper of the boat, John Crill, recalls being told[19] that Lord Shawcross, "when the election was due in about 1951, had Vanity V repainted with a vast 'Vote Labour' banner all the way along her topsides".