On October 9, Dr. Isaac Amon, Lecturer in Law at Washington University School of Law, was an invited speaker at the 2026 International Bar Association (IBA) Annual Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he addressed an audience of several hundred lawyers and legal leaders from around the world during the conference’s final-day Rule of Law Symposium.
Amon participated in the panel “Not just the rule of law, but a just rule of law,” alongside Deborah Enix-Ross, Secretary-General of the International Bar Association and former President of the American Bar Association; Jonas Christoffersen, a prominent Danish attorney; and Thomas Kjems, a Danish vlogger who was imprisoned for seven months in Iran. The panelists discussed how lawyers and legal institutions can become instruments of authoritarianism and why justice must inform and underpin the rule of law.
In his opening remarks, Amon reflected on the historical significance of the symposium’s timing and location. The conference coincided with the 80th anniversary of the conclusion of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and the 83rd anniversary of the rescue of Danish Jewry from Nazi deportation in October 1943. The panel also took place on October 9, exactly 72 years after the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served as chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg.
During his visit to Denmark, Amon also explored historic sites associated with the Nazi occupation, the Danish resistance, and the rescue of Danish Jewry, including Copenhagen’s Great Synagogue. He traveled to Dragør, a historic fishing village from which approximately 700 Jewish refugees escaped to neutral Sweden in October 1943, to bear witness and see the Elisabeth K571, a surviving rescue vessel that helped carry approximately 70 Jews to safety and remains operational today. He also met with grandchildren of Danish Jews who escaped Nazi persecution and of members of the Danish resistance.
Drawing upon the history of Nazi Germany and the Nuremberg Trials, Amon examined how legal institutions can become instruments of persecution but also serve as foundations for justice and accountability. He highlighted the contrasting examples of judges who resisted Nazi injustice, those who facilitated it, and the legal professionals who subsequently pursued accountability at Nuremberg.
Amon further invoked Justice Jackson’s warning against the suppression of dissent in his landmark 1943 opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, in which Jackson observed that history consistently showed that attempts to compel conformity would ultimately achieve only “the unanimity of the graveyard.” Amon ended by emphasizing that the rule of law alone is insufficient without a commitment to substantive justice, underscoring the importance of striving not merely for the rule of law, but for a just rule of law – one in which justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done.
Amon’s legal career has included work with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, the Missouri public defender and corrections systems, and the Missouri Parole Board, as well as investigations into ISIS atrocities in Iraq and Syria. He serves as Executive Director and Scholar-in-Chief of the Sinai Legal Association for Memory & Modernity (SLAMM), a nonprofit institute dedicated to the intersection of law, history, and the global Jewish experience. He has lectured to audiences across the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia on the Inquisition, the Holocaust, the Nuremberg Trials, and the broader history of law. During the spring 2026 semester, he introduced the new course Law and the Holocaust, offering students an in-depth examination of the role of law before, during, and after one of history’s greatest atrocities, while exploring the lasting relevance of these historical lessons to contemporary legal institutions, legal professionals, and the rule of law.
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