Reply #50: At the Nuremberg trials, Nazi judges were prosecuted for the same sort of evil.

[TacticalPeek]

The Nuremberg Trials: The Justice Trial

United States of America v. Alstötter et al.
("The Justice Case") 3 T.W.C. 1 (1948), 6 L.R.T.W.C. 1 (1948), 14 Ann. Dig. 278 (1948).

The Justice Trial is one of the most interesting of the Nuremberg trials. The trial of sixteen defendants, members of the Reich Ministry of Justice or People's and Special Courts, raised the issue of what responsibility judges might have for enforcing grossly unjust--but arguably binding--laws.

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In order to prove an individual defendant guilty, prosecutors had to show that the defendant consciously furthered these human rights abuses.

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Schlegelberger pointed out that he did not join the Nazis until 1938, and then only because he was ordered to do so by Hitler. Schlegelberger claimed to have harbored no ill-will toward the Jews. His personal physician, in fact, was Jewish. In his defense, he also stressed that he resisted the proposal that sent "half Jews" to concentration camps. Schlegelberger suggested giving "half Jews" a choice between sterilization and evacuation. He also argued that he continued to serve as long as he did because "if I had resigned, a worse man would have taken by place." Indeed, once Schlegelberger did resign, brutality increased.

In its decision, the Justice trial tribunal considered what it called Schlegelberger's "hesitant injustices." The tribunal concluded that Schlegelberger "loathed the evil that he did" and that his real love was for the "life of the intellect, the work of the scholar." In the end he resigned because "the cruelties of the system were too much for him." Despite its obvious sympathy with Schlegelberger's plight, the tribunal found him guilty.

If you can't do the time, then don't do the crime.