History shows us that at the Nuremberg trials the German judges invoked as a facet of their defense the concept that they were legally bound to enforce the laws of the Reich. They argued that the Tribunal could not find them guilty of crimes against humanity because everything they did fell within the legal framework established by the legally elected/appointed authorities of the German government.
Where they failed was that they attempted to use the law to justify their actions, i.e., endow morality through legality. This failed. Because clearly their actions were immoral and unjust, and attempting to cleanse the immorality of their acts by appeals to legality carried no weight with the tribunal. And rightly so. The German judges did not trash the rule of law, they embraced a flawed legal system. They trashed something more important than the law, they trashed justice, and moral absolutes.
They most certainly did trash the rule of law. Germany, like America, was a Federation. It was not a consolidated monolithic State, where morality was centrally decreed; where uniformity of values was enforced; where a central authority decreed moral absolutes for the population.
The Nazis created a "crisis," and assumed whatever power they needed to enforce their morality on the population. Had there been an independent local judiciary, hearing cases involving individual rights, there would have been many checks on that new morality.
It is no accident that the Founding Fathers left the protection of health, safety and morality to the States. It is one of the most important safeguards we have against run away authoritarianism.