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Contemporary Legal Lessons from the Holocaust
[Jewish Political Studies Review] Michael J. Bazyler - Sixty years after the Nuremberg Trials, the "Nuremberg legacy" is part of modern international law. An important aim of the Western judges and prosecutors at Nuremberg was to spotlight the wholesale corruption of the German legal system during the Nazi period. The failure of German legal actors to oppose the Nazi transformation of German law into legal barbarism has implications for the current dilemma faced by liberal democracies on how to maintain civil liberties while simultaneously enacting laws to protect against terrorism. Remembering the behavior of German judges and lawyers during the Nazi era can help ensure that today's democracies, faced with the threat of terrorism, do not transform themselves into legal tyrannies. The writer is professor of law at Whittier Law School in California.