Of Nazis, Americans, and Educating Against Catastrophe

Education may serve as civilization's last defense against catastrophic abuses of state power, yet legal education often fails to address this imperative. Muller examines Justice Robert Jackson's calls for legal education to instill moral grounding against wartime excesses, specifically referencing the Nuremberg trials and contemporary challenges in international law. The essay pairs accounts of two wartime lawyers from different nations—Benno Martin, a German chief of police in Nazi-occupied Franconia, and Karl Bendetsen, a U.S. Army colonel directing the Wartime Civil Control Administration overseeing Japanese American forced removal—to illustrate how educated professionals made choices either perpetuating or tolerating state repression. Martin authorized forced deportations of Jews while Bendetsen directed the racially motivated detention of Americans. Both avoided postwar accountability despite their roles in grave abuses. Muller argues that the legal profession's emphasis on pragmatic practice pressures law schools away from ethical reflection necessary to counterbalance professional ambitions that enable systemic oppression. The article takes up Jackson's charge that legal education must provide moral anchoring to help lawyers and students resist institutional pressures that facilitate catastrophic mistreatment of minorities.

Topics: Legal History · Constitutional Law · International Law

Keywords: Nuremberg trials · legal education · Justice Jackson · Japanese American internment · Nazi law · war crimes · professional ethics · catastrophe