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Volume VI · Page 116
| unpopular and disliked in the present-day
world with its spiritually tyrannical and intolerant love of dogma, with its
peremptory idea that there is no salvation outside whatever political dogmas it
happens to proclaim; its habit of drawing out fixed dogmas in nonsensical
variations which finally, in spite of assurances to the contrary, kills all
freedom of thought and expression, and moreover, vilifies politically and
civically not only every representative and apostle of a different creed, but
also anyone who merely doubts the infallibility of the dominant opinion, and
brings him to the point where his existence, his freedom, and sometimes even
his life are lost. Therefore, if a defense counsel makes this quotation the
leitmotif of his argumentation, the philosophical and spiritual authority of
the person whose pronouncement he refers to must be recognized generally. Now,
he who spoke these words is a man who exerted a unique influence not only upon
the shaping of the history of the human mind, but also especially upon the
structure of political ideas in occidental history, upon the political
formation and spiritual fundamentals of the Byzantine Empire, nay, even upon
the medieval Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church up to modern times. If
it is necessary, therefore, as in the case before us, to reveal the political
and sociological problems in the background when considering criminal facts
— and this had to be done by the prosecution as well in the arguments of
its eminent leader, General Telford Taylor — one may well make use of such
a man's words as a leitmotif for the defense. He is St. Augustine in his book
Civitas Dei. To avoid repetitions and overlapping, the defense has divided up the work among themselves. Whether, and to what extent, the outer facts of the individual points of the indictment are those of an international or national criminal offense will be presented to the court in detail by my learned legal friends on the defense counsel's bench. With regard to this theme, I shall limit myself to general fundamental remarks, to occasional allusions, particularly with regard to professional controversy about these legal problems and their relativity. I shall base my defense principally on the assumption that the purely jurisprudential arguments of the prosecution with regard to the legal subsumption are hypothetically correct — that is to say, I do not admit, but only assume them hypothetically correct. This means, as a logical consequence, a limiting of my line of argumentation to the outer facts of the case. I am aware that the distinct continental differentiation between the so-called outer actual facts of the case and the inner so-called subjective facts of the case is foreign to American legal thought. I shall endeavor to enter into the spirit |
