Hannah Arendt: Legal Theory and the Eichmann Trial

Summary

Hannah Arendt is one of the great outsiders of twentieth-century political philosophy. After reporting on the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, Arendt embarked on a series of reflections about how to make judgments and exercise responsibility without recourse to existing law, especially when existing law is judged as immoral. This book uses Hannah Arendt’s text Eichmann in Jerusalem to examine major themes in legal theory, including the nature of law, legal authority, the duty of citizens, the nexus between morality and law and political action.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction: The Eichmann fires

2 The House of Judgment

3 The gray zone: Kapo trials

4 The accused

5 From expulsion to extermination

6 Wannsee: The enabling conference

7 Duties of a law-abiding citizen

8 The deportation chapters

9 Did Eichmann receive a fair trial?

10 Judgment

11 Reading Eichmann today

12 The last Nazi trials and forgiveness

Author(s) Bio

Peter Burdon is Associate Professor and Reader at the Adelaide Law School, The University of Adelaide, Australia.