Meaning of Nuremberg defense | Babel Free

Definitions

1. An explanation offered as an excuse for behaving in a criminal or wrongful manner, claiming that one acted in this way because one was ordered by others (particularly superiors) to do so.
   US, idiomatic
2. An explanation offered as a defense to criminal or wrongful behavior, claiming that one is justified in not obeying a governmental order or a domestic law because the order or law is itself unlawful.
   US, broadly

Equivalents

Examples

““‘Nuremberg defense’, universally pleaded in war crimes trials,” is in actuality the Nuremberg nondefense, universally rejected in war crimes trials. It is a pity that the law of the Nuremberg Tribunal is so little understood after the passage of nearly a quarter of a century.”

“Recognition of the reliance on an official interpretation of the law defense for government officials and private citizens may initially seem to be the same as the Nuremberg defense of “I was just following orders.””

““It seems like he's [Charles Graner's] wanting to do the Nuremberg defense: ‘I was following orders,’” says Thomas Moran, a Houston attorney and a former military lawyer.”

“A relatively novel legal issue was raised by dissenters who contended that they did not so much oppose war in general as the Viet Nam war in particular. This contention, which became known as the Nuremberg defense, was raised by some young men who did not qualify as conscientious objectors and who were prosecuted for refusing to submit to induction.”

“In United States v. Berrigan, a Federal court in Maryland laid down a legal blueprint for the treatment of war protest cases where an attempt was made to invoke the "Nuremberg defence." Father Philip Berrigan and three others stood charged with injuring the property of the United States Government, mutilating records filed in a public office of the United States, and hindering the administration of the Military Selective Service Act.”

“Even during the Vietnam War, in the Pentagon Papers case, a standing objection would not have barred the assertion of a Nuremberg defense by those who committed the civil disobedience.”

“[pages 413–434] The modern Nuremberg Defenses are the antithesis of the original defense: criminal defendants today build a defense based on the reasoning and principles used by the Allied nations to convict Germans at Nuremberg. There are essentially two modern Nuremberg Defenses: the Citizen's Duty and the Citizen's Privilege. [...] Under the Citizen's Duty defense, defendants assert that they could be held liable for complicity with international crimes if they fail to take action to prevent such crimes. [...] [page 416] Under the Citizen's Privilege formulation of the Defense, the Nuremberg Principles are joined with the statutory and common law privileges allowing citizens to prevent crime. This then creates a "citizen's privilege" to break domestic law.”

“The American judiciary's narrow interpetation of the standing requirement under the Nuremberg Principles has eviscerated the Nuremberg defense and limited its application to a narrow range of cases. [...] The judiciary, in rejecting defendants' standing to raise the Nuremberg defense, ignores the recognized privilege of citizen intervention to prevent the commission of a crime.”

“An area in which one may indeed use the international defence, like the Nuremberg defence, though with little success, is opposition to nuclear weapons and other situations where civil disobedients set themselves against military combat. [...] Therefore, civil disobedients' interference in the production of weapons is not criminally culpable, but rather clearly excusable as avoiding the violation of a more serious law. Although this defence has had little success so far, it is worth brandishing and counts amongst the defences preferred by civil disobedients.”

CEFR level