Justifying Injustice

Herlinde Pauer-Studer is Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy at the University of Vienna, Austria. From 1997 to 1998 she was Fellow at the E. J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University, and in 2006 Fulbright Scholar, New York University. In 2016 she held the Austrian Chair at Stanford University. Her publications include Konrad Morgen: The Conscience of a Nazi Judge (co-authored with J. David Velleman, 2015).

• 1. Introduction; 2. From the Weimar Republic to the Third Reich; 3. The Führer state: facts and ideology; 4. National Socialist criminal law; 5. Racial legislation; 6. Police law; 7. The SS jurisdiction; 8. The moralization of law in National Socialism.

'At long last, we have a reliable primer on Nazi law. Justifying Injustice provides a terrific introduction to the theory and history of authoritarian legalism in a much-misunderstood case. To say that the law of the 'Third Reich' was morally odious, insists Pauer-Studer, is not enough. Far more important is reconstructing the socio-legal context in which the norms and institutions of Nazi law were invented, weaponized, and wielded. With tact and care, Pauer-Studer offer just such a reconstruction. She faults legal positivists and natural lawyers for their shared inability to come to terms with the really existing practices of Nazi legality. Although written from the perspective of legal theory, Justifying Injustice allows us to see the violence of law at the point of its application, thereby illuminating brightly the legal origins of Nazi dictatorship.' Jens Meierhenrich, Director of the Centre of International Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science