European Legal Institutions and the Holocaust

Catalog description

The seminar explores the ways in which law played a key role in facilitating the genocide in Europe during World War II. With a focus on the fully functioning and highly dissimilar legal systems of the Third Reich and Vichy France, we examine the discourse of judges, lawyers, law professors and government officials relating to the Jewish question. We explore the grotesque jurisprudence that rationalized discrimination, expropriation, imprisonment and death. We examine the postwar response of law to the horrors, and we explore very recent attempts in American federal courts to bring a measure of justice to Holocaust victims and their heirs. Throughout, our work is designed to integrate what we learn into the present-day understanding of how lawyers behave and speak, particularly during a state of exception or perceived crisis. Each student will be responsible for an oral presentation and a final paper.