The film ‘Nurymberga’ reveals how fair trials protect governments from justice system failures, using Robert H. Jackson’s Nuremberg experience.
Film Focus
“Norymberga” is an excellent film worth recommending, particularly for lawyers. It addresses less about the trial’s course and more about its background and the attitudes of those who decided it should occur. Post-war voices argued it was an unnecessary formality.
Early in the film, American prosecutor Robert H. Jackson asserts that a proper trial “serves not only the benefit of the accused. It is the best safeguard for the government itself against those errors that leave lasting stains on the justice system.”
Jackson’s Legal Philosophy
This same long-serving Supreme Court Justice, enriched by his Nuremberg experience facing systematic injustice cloaked in legal formalism, later praised procedural integrity. He stated: “Severe substantive law can be endured if it is honestly and impartially applied. Indeed, had we a choice, we would rather live under Soviet substantive law applied in good faith by our common law procedures than under our own substantive law enforced by Soviet procedural practices.”
This remark comes from the case *Shaughnessy v. United States ex rel. Mezei* (1953).