Legal Order as Motive and Mask: Franz Schlegelberger and the Nazi Administration of Justice
2000; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 18; Issue: 02 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1017/s0738248000012189
ISSN1939-9022
Autores Tópico(s)Law in Society and Culture
ResumoHistorians and legal theorists have suggested a range of sometimes complementary, sometimes contradictory reasons to explain why judges, prosecutors, and other officials of the German administration of justice proved willing both to persecute the various enemies of the Nazi state and to tolerate the many extralegal murders and lesser brutalities of other organs of the regime. One line of interpretation, dominant until the late 1960s, stressed the importance of the tradition of legal positivism. Believing themselves bound to the letter of the law, courts and prosecutors obeyed politically and racially repressive laws without asking moral questions. An alternative and opposing explanation emphasizes instead the justice administration's willingness to stretch the letter of the law to conform to “spontaneous popular sentiments of right.”
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