How the Nuremberg Trial made its final verdict reflects the debate between the natural law school and the positivist school of law. In terms of legislation, it is necessary to examine the legitimacy of the legislative basis. In terms of judiciary and law enforcement, the question that needs to be asked is whether a bad law is a law? Should legal persons carry out judicial and law enforcement work with evil laws as the criterion?
The naturalistic school of law pays attention to value analysis and starts from the mere nature of human beings, which also reflects the ought value of law revealed in the assumption of Rawls's theory of justice "veil of ignorance". Laws vary from country to country, but when we, as "human beings", want to rationally construct a world that is conducive to our own survival and therefore must coexist peacefully for all human beings, we must take the ultimate value goal as the cornerstone. This is exactly the judge's decision in the movie. Said "We stand by our oath: justice, truth...and the value of human rights".
The state is an organization formed by the free assembly of a part that people give up, and its service object is the people. If the "people" is only understood as its own people in a narrow sense, Germany during World War II is actually in line with Rousseau's statement. Because of the special circumstances of the times mentioned by the defendants and their lawyers in the film, most of Hitler's supporters believed that the mission of Nazi Germany was to benefit the German people and to free Germany from suffering. Austin once said, "The law is the command of the sovereign". Those German judges thought they were just serving their country and strictly enforced the law according to their duty, and if they didn't do that, it would be treason. But what is terrifying is that they have attached more importance to the concept of the state than to the cornerstone of the country, the world, and society—“people”.
Hannah Arendt pointed to the "banal evil" of the people, which Chief Justice Dan Heywood stated "it is not surprising that everyone would commit crimes in such an environment", is the German in the film. "I don't know" repeated over and over again. Do Germans really not know? Have they never heard screams, never seen neighbors being arrested for no apparent reason, never seen Jewish shops in the streets being looted and vandalized? It is legitimate, but also unrealistic, to accuse everyone (including but not limited to Germans) who witness the atrocities and remain silent. We must acknowledge the limitations of legal judgment while acknowledging that silence is a breeding ground for sin, and we can only pray for moral judgment to come upon them whenever this happens. It is feasible and necessary to judge German judges and administrators in a legal way according to the principle of power and responsibility and the conferment of "powers" in the state organs of public power. According to the defendant's lawyer, to acquit the public authority in a world court because everyone has contributed to violence, it will undoubtedly declare to the world that "the law does not blame the public." If so, what is the use of the law?
Taking history as a mirror is the real meaning of reading history over and over again. The Colonel of the prosecution pointed out in a roundabout way that this kind of political repression and restriction of the law is not only in the facts of the accused in the Nuremberg trial, but also exists now and in the future. Ideology first and nationalism first have always been nothing new. In Nazi Germany, where Hitler was in power, Nazism trumped everything else, human rights were not worth mentioning, and the law was reduced to a tool. In the Nuremberg trial, when interests became the highest bargaining chip, the values of justice, truth, and human rights that needed to be upheld were also left behind by American military officers who were plausible about national interests. The tenderness of the United States towards Germany is vividly shown in the film, and the last five-year bet between the defendant's lawyer and the chairman judge is even more embarrassing. Objectively speaking, there is no doubt about the legitimacy of the Nuremberg trial, and the positive organization and mobilization of politics in the smooth conduct of the trial cannot be ignored. Has the United States as a political instrument—and a tribunal composed solely of victorious nations—has violated its legal values to some extent?
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