One immediate effect of the Nuremberg Trials was that twenty-one Nazi war criminals were brought to justice and convicted for their crimes during World War II. Three men were accused but acquitted. Of the twenty-one men convicted, ten were hanged (Hermann Goring, Hitler's second-in-command at the end of the war, committed suicide before his appointment with the gallows). The most important effects of the trials were that they established important precedents. One was that people could be held legally accountable for violating international law, including agreed-upon laws of war. People had been punished for their actions during war before but never by the international community as was the case at Nuremberg. This led, in varying degrees, to the formation of organizations tasked with preventing and punishing human rights violations. The International Court of Justice, for example, was established by the United Nations and gained much of its authority from the precedents set at Nuremberg. Nuremberg also served as a foundation for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other agreements about conduct during war. While human rights and war crimes persist, Nuremberg helped create a legal framework through which they might be punished.