Nuremberg defense

Nuremberg defense

A plea or legal defense strategy in which the defendant claims that their actions were solely the result of carrying out the orders of superiors and that, as such, they should not be found guilty of such actions. Refers to the use of such a defense by political and military leaders of defeated Nazi Germany in the Nuremberg Trials of 1945–46. Against the charge of unlawful murder during wartime, the staff sergeant's defense attorney put forward a Nuremberg defense, claiming that the killings were carried out under direct orders by superior officers.
See also: defense
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • lawful orders
  • superior orders
  • luck of the draw
  • the mouse that has but one hole is quickly taken
  • mouse that has but one hole is quickly taken
  • marriage of convenience
  • above (one's) pay grade
  • beyond (one's) pay grade
  • grade
  • paygrade
References in periodicals archive
There is a German word for this blind obedience, he said-Kadavergehorsam,' literally, 'obedience unto death.' This excuse is now known as the 'Nuremberg Defense' because it was invoked during the trial of the Nazi leadership after World War II.
Hitler's willing executioners
In their closing arguments, several defendants resorted to what legal experts at the trial described the tactic as a "Nuremberg defense", likening it to the pleas entered at war crimes trials after World War II by Nazi leaders, who argued, unsuccessfully, that the atrocities alleged against them were the result of following orders.
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AS Stephen Soldz, a Boston-based psychoanalyst and APA critic observes: "What sort of experts on ethics write the Nuremberg defense into their professional ethics code?"
Collective unconscionable: how psychologists, the most liberal of professionals, abetted bush's torture policy
Servatius had absorbed the quiescent and cooperative style of other Nuremberg defense counsel.
Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals
We take pride in volume counts and holdings but take the Nuremberg defense when asked how, except by shear weight of numbers, these tomes and tools function to support the disciplines for which they were brought into being.
Bibliographic instruction and postmodern pedagogy
Interviewed recently in New York City by Myra MacPherson of The Washington Post, Sharon defended himself in injured tones on the matter of the Qibya slaughter in 1953, where his Unit 101 murdered more than seventy villargers, by saying, "I implemented an order that I got." Perhaps for the tyro killer Sharon the Nuremberg defense was available.
Beat the devil