Douglas Morris, "Legal Sabotage: Ernst Fraenkel in Hitler's Germany" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

·1 hr 4 min·5 clips

Host Mark Clovis welcomes Douglas Morris to discuss 'Legal Sabotage' and Ernst Fraenkel.

This episode of New Books in Biography features host Mark Clovis interviewing author Douglas Morris about his book "Legal Sabotage: Ernst Fraenkel and Hitler's Lawyers." Morris is a legal historian and former public defender. The conversation centers on Ernst Fraenkel, a German-Jewish labor lawyer who practiced in Berlin during the Nazi regime's early years. Fraenkel developed the concept of the "dual state" to describe the Nazi legal system, which split authority between a "normative state" following old laws and a "prerogative state" exercising arbitrary power. Morris details how Fraenkel used his position to engage in "legal sabotage," strategically using remaining Weimar-era laws to delay or obstruct cases for political defendants. The episode explains that Fraenkel represented leftists, trade unionists, and others targeted by the regime until he was forced to flee Germany in 1938. A surprising insight is that Fraenkel believed a lawyer's ethical duty was to exploit every technicality and procedural rule to defend clients, even under a dictatorship. Morris argues this practice was a form of intellectual and moral resistance, contrasting with later narratives of total legal collapse. The discussion reveals that Fraenkel's theoretical work, written partly in secret, was foundational for later studies of authoritarianism. The tone is academic and educational, structured as a detailed interview focused on historical and legal analysis. Listeners interested in legal history, Weimar/Nazi Germany, or theories of authoritarianism will find this episode compelling. Those seeking current events or narrative storytelling might find it too specialized.

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