When History Goes on Trial: Demjanjuk, Eichmann, and Justice After Atrocity
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All states. Are founded on genocidal acts. I think that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but there is a kind of violence that, you know, you look far enough back in the history and you often find some kind of connection between the development of a state and the suppression of a people. What protects us from violence in, you know, civil society? What protects us from the violence of our neighbors? And His argument is it's the state. The state is the thing that pacifies us, and by pacifying us, it kinda makes possible for order, for security, and you know, basically law itself, for kind of lawful existence. One of the things that really distinguishes a criminal state from just like a bad regime is basically that every state apparatus has been deformed. The military has been deformed to criminal ends, bureaucratic apparatus has been deformed for criminal ends, courts have been deformed for criminal ens, and you certainly can't make that claim about the United States today. Hey everybody, it's Michael Shermer. It's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer Show. My guest today is Lawrence Douglas. He's the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law.
Jurisprudence and social thought at Amherst. His many books include The Right, Wrong Man and John Demunyuk and the last great Nazi war crimes trial. And the memory of judgment is
Making law and history in the trials of the Holocaust. His writing has appeared in leading publications such as Harper's, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. He's a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement and The Guardian. And his new book is The Criminal State. There is that beautiful cover. post apocalyptic uh landscape there.
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