Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume IIVarious
Philosophy
Trials of war criminals before the Nuernberg military tribunals under control council law no. 10, volume II
Various
Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946; War crime trials -- Germany -- Nuremberg
The evidence has shown that not only in Germany and perhaps not even
primarily in this country, the reorganization of the relationship
between community and individual has resulted in new methods in the
sphere of medical science. In nearly all countries experiments have been
performed on human beings under conditions which entirely exclude
volunteering in a legal sense.
Immediate consequences arise for the interpretation of the law from this
change of medical views and above all from the change in medical
practice, since the essence of the law is universal and abstract and
naturally does not state the limits and the conditions under which
experiments on human beings are permissible and the borderline of the
criminality of such an experiment. The real practice regarding this
question is all the more important for the interpretation of the law
since almost every law, including Control Council Law No. 10, contains
standard rudiments of case facts, which means that determination in a
particular case can only be the outcome of a judicial judgment. No
special proof is needed to show that the question when and within what
limits medical experiments are admissible calls for a judicial judgment,
and that this cannot be established without taking practical experience
into consideration, not only in Germany but also outside Germany. The
standard rudiments of case facts are part of the legal facts and deal
with illegality as characteristic of the punishable act. Actual medical
practice inside and outside Germany, however, has not only to be
considered when examining the question as to whether the actions
constituting the subject of the indictment are illegal, but above all it
is fundamentally important when answering the further question as to
whether the actions constituting the subject of this procedure
constitute a criminal offense. In view of the fact that a criminal
offense is not likely to be a permanent psychological fact but a
standard computed fact in the sense of a personal reproach, the Court
for this reason also will not overlook the fact that particularly during
the last years, even outside Germany, medical experiments were performed
on human beings who undoubtedly did not volunteer for these experiments.
The unity of law and the indivisibility of its basic idea exclude
judging one and the same fact simultaneously according to different
legal principles and standards.
I shall comment later on the question of whether the defendants in the
performance of the experiments which constitute the indictment acted
primarily in their capacity as physicians, or whether their conduct—if
a just decision is to be rendered—must no longer be regarded from the
viewpoint of war service as medically trained research scientists.
* * * * *
_EXTRACT FROM THE FINAL PLEA FOR
DEFENDANT BEIGLBOECK_[22]
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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