Descriptions of Professor Douglas G. Morris' books and book chapter appear here.
To search for a book highlighted in your seminar's syllabus, use the pull-down menu to search by title in BLS Library's SARA catalog:
Alternative: Use the pull-down menu to search by author in SARA catalog:
In SARA catalog, these are some potentially useful subjects to search for books to support research in seminar: The Rule of Law, Nazi Law & War Crimes Prosecutions:
To stop the book display (below) from scrolling, click the circle at the bottom of the book carousel's box. BLS now uses OpenAthens to support BLS students' remote access to many digital resources. See: BLS Library Technology: Remote Access.
There is 1 print copy (call # KZ1176 .T39 1992) in BLS Library's circulating Int'l. collection.
Excerpt from book's description: "This is the definitive history of the Nuremberg crimes trials by one of the key participants, Telford Taylor, the distinguished lawyer who was a member of the American prosecution staff and eventually became chief counsel. In vivid detail, Taylor portrays the unfolding events as he 'saw, heard, and otherwise sensed them at the time, and not as a detached historian working from the documents might picture them.'"
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: "Click here to access online." BLS Library provides an "unlimited" number of copies to view.
Ebook's summary: "At the conclusion of World War II, war crimes tribunals were carried out at Nuremberg, Germany. Justice was meted out for countless war criminals, and Benjamin Ferencz was one of the chief prosecutors for one of the largest murder trials in history. This is the biography of the last living Nuremberg prosecutor."
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBSCO). BLS Library provides an "unlimited" number of copies to view. There also are 2 print copies (call # KK73.5.A98 W58 2005) in BLS Library's circulating Int'l. collection.
Excerpt from book's description: "In 1963, West Germany was gripped by a dramatic trial of former guards who had worked at the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. It was the largest and most public trial to take place in the country and attracted international attention. Using the pretrial files and extensive trial audiotapes, Rebecca Wittmann offers a fascinating reinterpretation of Germany's first major attempt to confront its past.Evoking the courtroom atmosphere, Wittmann vividly recounts the testimony of survivors, former SS officers, and defendants—a cross-section of the camp population."
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBSCO). BLS Library provides an "unlimited" number of copies to view.
Excerpt from ebook's description: "In Burning the Reichstag, Benjamin Hett offers a gripping account of Hitler's rise to dictatorship-one that challenges orthodoxy and recovers the true significance of the part the fire played. At the scene the police arrested 23-year-old Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch Communist stonemason. Though he was initially dismissed abroad as a Nazi tool, post-war historians since the 1950s have largely judged him solely guilty-a lone arsonist exploited by Hitler. Hett's book reopens the case, providing vivid portraits of key figures, including Rudolf Diels, Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, and the historian Fritz Tobias, whose account of the fire has, until now, been the standard. Making use of a number of new sources and archives, Hett sets the Reichstag fire in a wider context, revealing how and why it has remained one of the last mysteries of the Nazi period, and one of the most controversial and contested events in the 20th century."
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBSCO). BLS Library provides an "unlimited" number of copies to view.
Excerpt from ebook's summary: "Basing his work on the writings of Schmitt and his contemporaries, extensive new archival documentation, and parts of Schmitt's personal papers, Professor Bendersky uses Schmitt's public career as a framework for re-evaluating his contributions to political and legal theory. This book establishes that Schmitt's late Weimar writings were directed at preventing rather than encouraging the Nazi acquisition of power."
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBSCO). BLS Library provides an "unlimited" number of copies to view.
Excerpt from ebook's description: "During a 1931 trial of four Nazi stormtroopers, known as the Eden Dance Palace trial, Hans Litten grilled Hitler in a brilliant and merciless three-hour cross-examination, forcing him into multiple contradictions and evasions and finally reducing him to helpless and humiliating rage (the transcription of Hitler's full testimony is included.) At the time, Hitler was still trying to prove his embrace of legal methods, and distancing himself from his stormtroopers. The courageous Litten revealed his true intentions, and in the process, posed a real threat to Nazi ambition."
Winner of the 2007 Fraenkel Prize for outstanding work of contemporary history, in manuscript.
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (OXFORD). BLS Library provides multiple digital copies.
Excerpt from ebook's abstract: "This text, first published in 1941, provides a comprehensive analysis of the rise and nature of National-Socialism, and is the only such analysis written from within Hitler’s Germany. Its central thesis is that two states co-existed in National-Socialist Germany—hence, Fraenkel’s invention of the concept of the dual state. This was comprised of a normative state (which protected the legal order as expressed in legislation, decisions of the courts, and decisions of administrative bodies) and a prerogative state (governed by the ruling party, and unrestrained by legal guarantees). The relationship and conflict between these states is analyzed through decisions of the German courts and the development of judicial practice."
There is 1 print copy (call # KZ7180 .S26 2016) in BLS Library's circulating Int'l. collection.
Excerpt from book's description: "A book that explores the development of the world-changing legal concepts of 'genocide' and 'crimes against humanity' that came about as a result of the unprecedented atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich."
Open access ebook available to view or download through OAPEN Home.
Ebook's summary: "To date, the relationship between Otto Kirchheimer and Carl Schmitt has invariably been described as friendly, despite their political differences. Kirchheimer has even been attributed the role of the godfather of today's left-Schmittianism. With reference to previously unknown archival materials, conversations with personal contacts, and through a new reading of the theoretical works of both authors, including an analysis of the Nazi vocabulary used by Schmitt, Hubertus Buchstein exposes this view as a politically motivated legend. Buchstein claims that the best way to characterize their relationship from their first meeting in Bonn in 1926 up until Kirchheimer's death in 1965 is as enduring enmity - in a political, a theoretical, and even a personal sense."
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBSCO). BLS Library provides an "unlimited" number of copies to view.
Excerpt from book's description: "In the wake of the Second World War, how were the Allies to respond to the enormous crime of the Holocaust? Even in an ideal world, it would have been impossible to bring all the perpetrators to trial. Nevertheless, an attempt was made to prosecute some. This book uncovers ten 'forgotten trials' of the Holocaust, selected from the many Nazi trials that have taken place over the course of the last seven decades. It showcases how perpetrators of the Holocaust were dealt with in courtrooms around the world, revealing how different legal systems responded to the horrors of the Holocaust."
There is 1 print copy (call # KK185.B38 S7415 2020) in BLS Library's circulating Int'l. collection.
Excerpt from book's description: "German Jewish judge and prosecutor Fritz Bauer (1903–1968) played a key role in the arrest of Adolf Eichmann and the initiation of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. Author Ronen Steinke tells this remarkable story while sensitively exploring the many contributions Bauer made to the postwar German justice system."
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (CAMBRIDGE). BLS Library provides multiple digital copies.
Excerpt from ebook's description: "The history of German lawyers in private practice from 1878 to 1933 helps answer questions about the inability of German liberalism to withstand National Socialism in 1933."
Includes Ch. 9: The Limits of Political Liberalism: Lawyers and the Weimar State + Ch. 10: Conclusion: Lawyers and the Limits of Liberalism.
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBSCO). BLS Library provides an "unlimited" number of copies to view.
Book summary: "The German Left and the Weimar Republic illuminates the history of the political left by presenting a wide range of documents on various aspects of socialist and communist activity in Germany. Separate chapters deal with the policy of Social Democracy in and out of government, the attempts of the Communist Party to overthrow the Weimar Republic, and then later to oppose it. Later chapters move away from the political scene to treat the attitudes of the parties to key social issues, in particular questions of gender and sexuality. The book concludes with a presentation of documents on various groups of socialist and communist dissidents. Many of the documents are made accessible for the first time, and each chapter begins with an original introduction indicating the current state of research."
There is 1 print copy (call # KZ1176.5 .B58 2001) in BLS Library's circulating Int'l. collection.
Excerpt from publisher's abstract: "When the Allies decided to try German war criminals at the end of World War II they were attempting not only to punish the guilty but also to create a record of what had happened in Europe. This book shows how Britain and the United States went about inscribing the history of Nazi Germany and the effect their trial and occupation policies had on both long and short term ‘memory’ in Germany and Britain. The book examines the actions and trials of German soldiers and policemen, the use of legal evidence, the refractory functions of the courtroom, and Allied political and cultural preconceptions of both ‘Germanism’ and of German criminality."
There is 1 print copy (call # KZ7180 .B39 2016) in BLS Library's circulating Int'l. collection. Multiple digital copies are available through an Oxford Univ. Press subscription ebook collection. In BLS Library's catalog record for the ebook, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (OXFORD).
Includes: Ch. 1: The Holocaust: A Legal History.
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (OXFORD).
Book summary: "This history of the discipline of public law in Germany covers three dramatic decades of the 20th century. It opens with World War I, analyses the highly creative years of the Weimar Republic, and recounts the decline of public law that began in 1933 and extended to the downfall of the Third Reich."
Documentary film (35 min.) Publicly accessible through YouTube. BLS Library also has 1 DVD of this film (call # KK9400 .H58 2006) in its AV collection. BLS Library's computers have disc drives that can read a DVD. Faculty who wish to show a DVD in a classroom should contact the BLS IT Department (support@brooklaw.edu).
Excerpt from film's summary: "'Hitler's Courts' features archival footage from the Nazi era, rarely seen photographs, and interviews with leading voices in international law."
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBSCO). BLS Library provides an "unlimited" number of copies to view.
Book summary: "In the aftermath of World War II, virtually all European countries struggled with the dilemma of citizens who had collaborated with Nazi occupiers. Jewish communities in particular faced the difficult task of confronting collaborators among their own ranks--those who had served on Jewish councils, worked as ghetto police, or acted as informants. European Jews established their own tribunals--honor courts--for dealing with these crimes, while Israel held dozens of court cases against alleged collaborators under a law passed two years after its founding. In Jewish Honor Courts: Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust, editors Laura Jockusch and Gabriel N. Finder bring together scholars of Jewish social, cultural, political, and legal history to examine this little-studied and fascinating postwar chapter of Jewish history."
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBSCO). BLS Library provides an "unlimited" number of copies to view.
Excerpt from book's description: "In Justice behind the Iron Curtain, Gabriel N. Finder and Alexander V. Prusin examine Poland's role in prosecuting Nazi German criminals during the first decade and a half of the postwar era."
BLS Library provides 1 copy of this ebook. If this is your first time checking out a BLS ebook from provider EBC, you need to register (a brief process).
Book description: "Post-war legal scholars commonly consider the Third Reich's judicial system to be the paradigm of 'evil law'. By examining how crucial parts of this distorted normative order evolved and were justified by regime-loyal legal theorists, we can appreciate how law can bend to a political ideology and fail to keep state power from transgressing elementary standards of humanity and the rule of law. From 1933 to 1939, a flood of publications reflected on the question of how to adapt law to the political ends of National Socialism, debating both the normative and constitutional foundations of the National Socialist state, and the proper form and content of criminal and police law in this new political framework. These debates, the main threads of which are central to this book, reveal the normative ideas driving the Führer state and the legal subtext to the Nazi regime's escalating atrocities."
There is 1 print copy (call # KK3655 .L39 2013) in BLS Lbrary's circulating Int'l. collection.
Book summary: "While we often tend to think of the Third Reich as a zone of lawlessness, the Nazi dictatorship and its policies of persecution rested on a legal foundation set in place and maintained by judges, lawyers, and civil servants trained in the law. This volume offers a concise and compelling account of how these intelligent and well educated legal professionals lent their skills and knowledge to a system of oppression and domination. The chapters address why German lawyers and jurists were attracted to Nazism; how their support of the regime resulted from a combination of ideological conviction, careerist opportunism, and legalistic self delusion; and whether they were held accountable for their Nazi-era actions after 1945. This book also examines the experiences of Jewish lawyers who fell victim to anti-Semitic measures. The volume will appeal to scholars, students, and other readers with an interest in Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and the history of jurisprudence."
There is 1 print copy (call #: KK190 .S76 1998) in BLS Library's circulating Int'l. collection.
Excerpt from book's description: "In The Law under the Swastika, Michael Stolleis examines the evolution of legal history, theory, and practice in Nazi Germany, paying close attention to its impact on the Federal Republic and on the German legal profession."
There is 1 print copy (call # KK3712.J49 W55 2018) in BLS Library's circulating Int'l. collection.
Excerpt from book's description: "Lawyers Without Rights is about the rule of law and how one government – the Third Reich in Germany – systematically undermined fair and just law through humiliation, degradation and legislation, leading to expulsion of Jewish lawyers and jurists from the legal profession."
There is 1 copy (call # DS135.G3315 L659 2001) in BLS Library's circulating Main collection.
Edited by Karl A. Schleunes; Bernard Loesener's memoirs translated by Carol Scherer.
Excerpt from book's description: "From April 1933 to early 1943, Bernard Loesener served as the official 'Jewish Expert' in the German Third Reich's Ministry of the Interior, the government body responsible for the Nazi's legislative assault on German Jewry. In that role, he personally drafted much of the legislation, the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 preeminently, that gradually dispossessed, disenfranchised, and dehumanized the Jews of Nazi Germany. During the first six years of Nazi rule, the seminal period of government-sponsored anti-Semitism, Loesener kept the minutes of many crucial, high-level, inter-ministerial conferences concerned with the 'Jewish Question'."
1 print copy (call #: KZ1179.M43 A44 2025) is available on Reserve.
Excerpt from book's overview: "The Nuremberg Diary and Correspondence provide readers unprecedented access to the personal papers of Leo Alexander, the chief medical expert at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial (1946-1947)."
There is 1 print copy (call # KZ1174 .D68 2001) in BLS Library's circulating Int'l. collection.
Excerpt from book's description: "[P]rovides a vivid, fascinating study of five exemplary proceedings - the Nuremberg trial of the major Nazi war criminals, the Israeli trials of Adolf Eichmann and John Demjanjuk, the French trial of Klaus Barbie, and the Canadian trial of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel. These trials, the book argues, were "show trials" in the broadest sense: they aimed to do justice both to the defendants and to the history and memory of the Holocaust."
There is 1 print copy of 1st ed. (call # KF224.N28 F57 2003) in BLS Library's circulating Main collection. 09/02/25: BLS Library's acquisitions team is investigating "unlimited access, DRM free" to 2nd ed. through JSTOR.
Excerpt from publisher's book description: "Although huge in scope and impact, the 9/11 attacks were not the first threat by foreign terrorists on American soil. During World War II, eight Germans landed on our shores in 1942 bent on sabotage. Caught before they could carry out their missions, under FDR’s presidential proclamation they were hauled before a secret military tribunal and found guilty. Meeting in an emergency session, the Supreme Court upheld the tribunal’s authority. Justice was swift: six of the men were put to death—a sentence much more harsh than would have been allowed in a civil trial. [Constitutional scholar] Louis Fisher chronicles the capture, trial, and punishment of the Nazi saboteurs in order to examine the extent to which procedural rights are suspended in time of war."
There is 1 print copy (call #: D810.C8 P58 2001) in BLS LIbrary's circulating Main collection.
Excerpt from publisher's book description: "The Plunder of Jewish Property During the Holocaust brings together a range of distinguished international experts to examine the major cases concerning restitution in several countries, covering specific issues such as Nazi gold, wartime theft of works of art, and the ownership of dormant accounts in Swiss banks. The contributors incorporate insights from diverse disciplines such as international law, economics, history, and political science which, taken as a whole, make clear that some chapters of European history will have to be rewritten."
BLS Library provides 1 copy of this ebook. If this is your first time checking out a BLS ebook from provider EBC, you need to register (a brief process).
Ebook includes: Ch. 5: World War I and the Weimar Republic; Ch. 6: Nazi Germany; and Ch. 7: After 1945.
BLS Library provides 1 copy of this ebook.
Excerpt from ebook's description: "At the end of the Nuremberg trial in 1946, some of the greatest war criminals in history were sentenced to death, but hundreds of thousands of Nazi murderers and collaborators remained at large. The Allies were ready to overlook their pasts as the Cold War began, and the horrors of the Holocaust were in danger of being forgotten. In The Prosecutor, Jack Fairweather brings to life the remarkable story of Fritz Bauer, a gay, Jewish judge from Stuttgart who survived the Nazis and made it his mission to force his countrymen to confront their complicity in the genocide. In this deeply researched book, Fairweather draws on unpublished family papers, newly declassified German records, and exclusive interviews to immerse readers in the shadowy, unfamiliar world of postwar West Germany where those who implemented genocide run the country, the CIA is funding Hitler's former spy-ring in the east, and Nazi-era anti-gay laws are strictly enforced. But once Bauer landed on the trail of Adolf Eichmann, he wouldn't be intimidated. His journey took him deep into the dark heart of West Germany, where his fight for justice would set him against his own government and a network of former Nazis and spies bent on silencing him. In a time when the history of the Holocaust is taken for granted, The Prosecutor reveals the courtroom battles that were fought to establish its legacy and the personal cost of speaking out. The result is a searing portrait of a nation emerging from the ruins of fascism and one man's courage in forcing his people--and the world--to face the truth."
There is 1 print copy (call #: KZ1178 .R43 2012) in BLS LIbrary's circulating Main collection.
Book summary: "For decades the history of the US Military Tribunals at Nuremberg (NMT) has been eclipsed by the first Nuremberg trial-the International Military Tribunal or IMT. The dominant interpretation--neatly summarized in the ubiquitous formula of "Subsequent Trials"--ignores the unique historical and legal character of the NMT trials, which differed significantly from that of their predecessor. The NMT trials marked a decisive shift both in terms of analysis of the Third Reich and conceptualization of international criminal law. The first comprehensive examination of the NMT, this volume brings together diverse perspectives from the fields of law, history, and political science, exploring the genesis, impact, and legacy of the twelve Military Tribunals held at Nuremberg between 1946 and 1949."
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBSCO). BLS Library provides an "unlimited" number of digital copies to view.
Excerpt from ebook's summary: "This unique sourcebook explores the Stab-in-the-Back myth that developed in Germany in the wake of World War One, analyzing its role in the end of the Weimar Republic and its impact on the Nazi regime that followed." "[D]raws on German government records, foreign and domestic newspaper accounts, diplomatic reports, diary entries and letters to provide different national and political perspectives on the issue."
1 print copy (call # K3169 .B64 1991) is available in BLS Library's circulating Int'l. collection.
Collection of essays by German jurist Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, translated by James.Amery Underwood.
There is 1 print copy (call # KZ6310 .B37 2000) in BLS Library's circulating Int'l. collection.
Excerpt from book's description: "In this book, Gary Bass offers an unprecedented look at the politics behind international war crimes tribunals, combining analysis with investigative reporting and a broad historical perspective. The Nuremberg trials powerfully demonstrated how effective war crimes tribunals can be. But there have been many other important tribunals that have not been as successful, and which have been largely left out of today's debates about international justice. This timely book brings them in, using primary documents to examine the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, the Armenian genocide, World War II, and the recent wars in the former Yugoslavia."
There is 1 print copy (call # KZ7145 .C76 2014) in BLS Library's circulating Int'l. collection.
Book description: "In this sweeping, definitive work, historian David Crowe offers an unflinching account of the long and troubled history of genocide and war crimes. From ancient atrocities to more recent horrors, he traces their disturbing consistency but also the heroic efforts made to break seemingly intractable patterns of violence and retribution."
In BLS Library's catalog record, click: ACCESS ONLINE VERSION - (EBSCO). BLS Library provides an "unlimited" number of digital copies to view + 1 print copy (call # KK4710 .W45 2000) in the circulating Int'l. collection.
Excerpt from book's description: "This selection of the major works of constitutional theory during the Weimar period reflects the reactions of legal scholars to a state in permanent crisis, a society in which all bets were off. Yet the Weimar Republic's brief experiment in constitutionalism laid the groundwork for the postwar Federal Republic, and today its lessons can be of use to states throughout the world. Weimar legal theory is a key to understanding the experience of nations turning from traditional, religious, or command-and-control forms of legitimation to the rule of law."