Concept of (In)justice

Mainly Based on Nazi

Laws
By Dr. Myint Zan

Justice may be defined in

conjunction with injustice
But what is just and unjust may
not be easily identifiable simply
based on a criterion or criteria
and mechanically applying them.

Is injustice simply an absence of

justice or a polar negative
having its own distinctive criteria
Compare in paleontology
absence of evidence is not
evidence of absence

Injustice or unfairness can start from

relatively minor things like income of
job interviews to the unjust political
regimes such as that of the Nazis
(1933-1945), Stalinist Soviet Union
(especially during the 1930s), Khmer
Rouge regime (1975-78), atrocities
Rwanda (1994) and Bosnia (1990s) to
give selective examples

Injustice or unjust political

regimes involving mass murder is
not peculiar to only one type of
political system

The Nazi (Third Reich) regime

though stated as the worst
violators of human rights of the
20th century cannot be regarded
as unique in its evil political
ways.

Even though gross abuses of

human rights were committed by
the Nazi regime whose laws were
unjust so that no formal
description or legalistic analysis
of the Nazi laws can be made this
is not correct.

Traffic regulation in Nazi was

much the same as in other
countries for example.
Mcoubrey and White argue that
a sweeping condemnation of Nazi
laws as merely evil is not
sufficient

Revisit the grudge informer case

Because the Nazi regime was

completely defeated a post
Second World war analysis of
Nazi laws was made possible

Lon L Fuller stated in his Inner

morality of law that failure to
adhere to the eight benchmarks
or criteria mainly in terms of
procedural fairness could give rise
to breach of the inner morality of
law and also to injustice

But there are laws which are

inherently unjust in their
substance even when correctly
applied.

Case of Leidmann v Reisenthal 57

NY St. Reps. (2d) 875.
Plaintiff sought to escape racial
persecution in Nazi-occupied
France. Paid defendants
substantial sum of money and had
handed valuable jewellery and
money

Later defendant abandoned

them plaintiff able to escape to US
found the defendant in New York
and brought action against him
for damages.
Defendants claim the contract
was illegal (Legality of purpose)
and therefore cannot be enforced.

Court said formal illegality of the

contract could not act as a bar to
action for restitution
What ever its status of the Vichy
(Nazi installed French
government) during the Second
World war US court would not
enforce it now.

Query what would Aquinas,

Hobbes and Locke would have
said to the laws and the decision
of the US court

Other unjust laws comparable to

Nazi racial laws South Africas
apartheid laws
International human rights law
starting with the UDHR have its
possible source in the injustice of
Nazi laws

However the concept of justness and

unjustness is based not only on the
concept of human rights
Nazi regime hardly unique in its
evilness two main issues regarding
the Nazi laws unjustness is
substantively profoundly unjust where
status is penalized not conduct

In the procedural applications to

the applications of the law were
unjust
Humanity should be treated as an
end itself and not a means to an
end

Therefore justice and injustice may

be differently distinct concepts
rather than the absence of justice

Mcoubrey and White states that in

terms of societal justice may involve
balancing between individual
aspiration and collective need

Injustice would involve the

condition of a society in which the
humanity of the people living in it
both individually and in society

In most cases it would rarely be

perfectly just or monstrously
unjust