Hitler's Justice: Courts of the Third Reich
I'm digging out this book from my library and I recommend you also read it.
Review 1
Read the first 100 pages, and youll see the parallels between the changes in the German judiciary in the run-up to Nazi law and the changes in the judiciary in the United States. What I found particularly troubling was the use by Nazi judges and prosecutors of an interpretive technique called the teleological method. pp. 80-81. The idea was that judges were to identify a particular ideological meaning and intent underlying a given law and then to use this intent to undermine the wording of the law. Our own right-wing judges call that original intent. The words dont mean what you think they mean; theres some intent that not reflected in the words on the page. The words say ABC but the founders originally intended XYZ. How horrible!
Review 2
How the German legal profession abandoned the rule of law, notably in the special tribunals (Special Courts and People's Courts) in Weimar and Nazi Germany. Muller notes that this trend pre-dated Hitler, that the laws enabling it were in the name of national security, that it followed the replacement of liberal with conservative judges over several decades, pre-Hitler, and that the judges had come to accept public affairs as a "friend or foe" paradigm with no room for loyal opposition.
https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Justice-Courts-Third-Reich/dp/067440419X