The Lawfare Podcast Lawfare Daily: ‘The Criminal State’ with Lawrence Douglas
Apr 22, 2026
Lawrence Douglas, James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law at Amherst and author of The Criminal State, explores how international justice shifted from prosecuting aggression to an atrocity-focused framework. He discusses Nuremberg's original aims, the Eichmann reframing toward genocide, challenges of prosecuting state bureaucracies, belated prosecutions, and how films and public perception shaped memories of trials.
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Nuremberg Framed Aggression As The Supreme Crime
- Nuremberg prioritized the crime of aggression as the centerpiece of postwar international criminal law.
- The tribunal called aggression the "supreme international crime," treating war crimes and crimes against humanity as knock-on effects of aggressive war.
Eichmann Made Genocide The Central Legal Focus
- The 1961 Eichmann trial deliberately reframed Nazi atrocities as standalone crimes rather than consequences of aggression.
- Eichmann centered survivor testimony and treated genocide as a crime sui generis, elevating atrocity-focused prosecutions.
Criminal State Describes Institutionalized State Criminality
- The term Verbrecherstaat or "criminal state" captures that Nazi Germany turned entire state institutions toward criminal ends.
- Karl Jaspers used the term to argue this rupture required special legal and moral reckoning.
