Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Wilke on the Nuremberg Trial of Josef Altstötter

Christiane Wilke, Carleton University, Department of Law and Legal Studies, has posted, auf Deutsch, Jurists on Trial, Law under Scrutiny, and the Legacy of "Civilization,” a chapter in Kim C. Priemel and Alexa Stiller, eds., NMT: Die Nuernberger Militaertribunale zwischen Geschichte, Gerechtigkeit und Rechtsschoepfung (Hamburg: HIS, 2013).  (It turns out that Telford Taylor was a prosecutor in the case Wilke takes up.)  Here is the abstract:
What happens when judges judge judges? This paper examines the 1947 Altstoetter trial, the third of the thirteen trials in the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. It places the trial in the context of US and international legal history. It argues that the court's understanding of the law, the deeds, and the charges crucially depended on understanding the Nazi regime in the framework of barbarism and civilization: The Nazis appeared as 'hiccups of barbarism' (Zygmunt Bauman) in an otherwise civilized country.