Weirdly, I agree most with the position of the Soviet judge on the subject of whether "aggressive war" was against international law and criminal. The book lays out the discussions and arguments of the war crimes judges, most of whom relied on a hodge-podge of international treaties, none of which clearly made aggressive war criminal. Others fell back on the concept of natural law, though thee two main proponents relied on different philosophers for exposition. Others simply accepted the tribunal's charter as definitive.

The reason why aggressive war was even an issue was that Douglas MacArthur and the United States really wanted to make the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor a de facto violation of international law (as covered in earlier chapters).

Mind you, I think the position of the Soviet judge was at odds with his own country's history. It's invasion of Poland, the Baltic nations, and Finland were neither defending national existence nor in defense of people's rights. The Dutch judge recognized that convicting Japanese leaders of aggressive war did not comport with the Netherlands' own aggressive wars of colonization of the East Indies. His solution would have been to excise aggressive war from the charges because it was not clearly part of international treaties as criminal, a position that the Indian judge did end up taking.

I lean toward the Soviet judge because the rubric is both just & clean, and when it comes to war I am not inclind toward needing legalistic treaties to brand war crimes as crimes.