This extract from the site's introduction - will give the background.

A Commentary on the Justice Case
by Doug Linder (c) 2000

No one contends, of course, that German judges and prosecutors destroyed as many lives as did the SS, Gestapo, or other agencies of the Nazi machine. Their victims number in the thousands, not the millions. A judge who knowingly sentenced even one innocent Jew or Pole to death was, however, guilty in the eyes of the prosecutors and judges at the Justice Trial in Nuremberg. There would be no "only a couple of atrocities" defense.

Ingo Muller, in Hitler's Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich, provides a penetrating picture of the workings of the criminal justice system in Nazi Germany. Muller's analysis of the evidence suggests that most German judges--contrary to common opinion--were ultraconservative nationalists who were largely sympathetic to Nazi goals. The "Nazification" of German law occurred with the willing and enthusiatic help of judges, rather than over their principled objections.

Many judges appointed before the Nazi rise to power--because of the economic and social circles that judges were drawn from--had views that were quite compatible with the Nazi party. A few Jewish judges sat on the bench when the Nazis assumed power--but only a very few. A 1933 law removed those few Jewish judges from officee.

Only a handful of the non-Jewish judges demonstrated real courage in the face of Nazi persecution and violations of civil liberties. One who did was Lothar Kressig, a county court judge who issued injunctions agains sending hospital patients to extermination camps. When ordered to withdraw his injunctions, Kreyssig refused. He also attempted to initiate a prosecution of Nazis for their role in the program. Kreyssig, under pressure, eventually resigned.

In the Justice trial, American prosecutors sought to demonstrate a pattern of judicial and prosecutorial support for Nazi programs of persecution, sterilization, extermination, and other gross violations of human rights. In order to prove an individual defendant guilty, prosecutors had to show that the defendant consciously furthered these human rights abuses.

The violations of human rights progressively worsened as the Nazis solidified power and began their wars of aggression. In 1938, laws were adopted that imposed different levels of punishment for the same crime--a tougher punishment for Jews, a lighter one for other Germans. By 1940, sterilization programs were underway. By 1942, the "Final Solution," the wholesale extermination of Jews and other persons deemed undesirable, was in full swing.

Two features of German law combined to facilitate the Nazi's evil schemes. The first was that German law, unlike the law of the United States and many other nations, lacked "higher law" (constitutional or ethical standards) that might be resorted to by judges to avoid the harsh effects of discriminatory laws adopted by the Nazi regime. The second difficulty was that there was no separation of powers between the executive and judicial branches of government. Hitler declared, and the Reichstag agreed, had the power "to intervene in any case." This was done, legally, through what was called "an extraordinary appeal for nullification of sentence." The nullification invariably resulted in a sentence the Nazis thought was too light being replaced by a more severe sentence, often death. If these features of German law weren't enough, the Nazis also assigned a member of the Security Service to each judge to funnel secret information about the judges back to Hitler and his henchmen.