22 Facts About Telford Taylor

Telford Taylor was an American lawyer and professor.

Telford Taylor reached the rank of brigadier general in 1946, following the war.

Telford Taylor was born on February 24,1908, in Schenectady, New York.

Telford Taylor's parents were John Bellamy Taylor and Marcia Estabrook Jones.

Telford Taylor attended Williams College and Harvard Law School, where he received his law degree in 1932.

Telford Taylor was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1943 and visited England, where he helped negotiate the 1943 BRUSA Agreement.

At the Nuremberg trials, Taylor initially served as an assistant to chief counsel Robert H Jackson and, in that function, was the US prosecutor in the High Command case.

When Jackson resigned his position as prosecutor after the first trial before the IMT and returned to the US, Telford Taylor was promoted to brigadier general and succeeded him on October 17,1946, as chief counsel for the remaining twelve trials before the US Nuremberg Military Tribunals.

Telford Taylor advised William L Shirer in the late 1950s when Shirer was writing The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, loaning documents and books from his personal collection.

Telford Taylor became increasingly concerned with Senator Joseph McCarthy's activities, which he criticized strongly.

In 1961 Telford Taylor attended the Eichmann trial in Israel as a semiofficial observer and expressed concerns about the trial being held on a defective statute, citing international justice and ethical issues.

Telford Taylor became a full professor at Columbia University in 1962, where he would be named Nash Professor of Law in 1974.

Telford Taylor was one of very few professors there who refused to sign a statement issued by the Columbia Law School that termed the militant student protests at Columbia in 1968 as being beyond the "allowable limits" of civil disobedience.

Telford Taylor was very critical of the conduct of US troops in the Vietnam War, and in 1971 urged President Richard Nixon to set up a national commission to investigate the conflict.

Telford Taylor strongly criticized the court-martial of Lieutenant William Calley, the commanding officer of the US troops involved in the My Lai massacre because it did not include higher-ranking officers.

Telford Taylor published his views in a book, Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy, in 1970.

Telford Taylor argued that by the standards employed at the Nuremberg trials, US conduct in Vietnam and Cambodia, while different in some ways, was equally criminal as that of the Nazis during World War II.

Shortly after the end of the Vietnam War, Telford Taylor said over the past few decades since World War II, some of his historical views had changed.

Telford Taylor married twice; first to Mary Ellen Walker in 1937.

Telford Taylor was survived by their three children, Joan, Ellen, and John.

Telford Taylor had one child, Ursula Rechnagel, with Julie Rechnagel, both of whom survived him.

Telford Taylor died at age 90 on May 23,1998, at St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan, after suffering a stroke.