James Tenney Brand was an Oregon lawyer, circuit judge, and Oregon Supreme Court justice. In 1946 President Truman appointed Brand to serve as a judge on the military tribunal in which high ranking German judges and officials of the German Ministry of Justice were prosecuted in Nuremberg, Germany for their war crimes. Brand served as the presiding judge of the year-long trial.

That war crimes prosecution inspired the popular 1961 movie, Judgment at Nuremberg. Brand's powerful performance in the Nuremberg prosecution is thought to have been the inspiration for Spencer Tracy's movie portrayal of Judge Dan Haywood.

Brand was born in Oberlin, Ohio, to one of the city's most powerful ministers and a mother descended from two governors of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The book traces Brand's storied legal career revealing his powerful intellect and legal acumen that served him well on Nuremberg's world stage.

Paul J. DeMuniz, a former chief justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, provides expert analysis of the American Army's war crimes evidence, the defendants' response to that evidence, and Brand's important role in rendering judgment on each defendant. The book's account of the evils inflicted on the world by Nazi Germany, also serves as a modern reminder of the malevolence of totalitarianism in any form.

