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.
"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." So true, yet your perspective on the Terri Schiavo case--as stated in your essay at your website--starts with an erroneous assumption, that Terri was brain dead for the past decade plus. If you CHOOSE to accept as inerrant the rubber stampery of the judiciary, without at least digging deeper to see if she actually was 'gone' (as you have chosen to believe), then don't be put off when folks dismiss your further opines reagrding the efficacy of a probate judge ordering that she be executed for what is clearly a judgement that she was gone already. Frankly, willy-nilly sounds about right for the repeated unjust rulings in Florida over Terri's assumed wishes. [HINT: tube feeding wasn't even considered an extraordinary life support measure when Terri (at 20 years old!) is alleged to have made her assertion regarding 'being kept alive if severely disabled'; Judge Greer disallowed sworn testimony based on his own flawed memory of Karen Quinlan's 'aliveness'.]
The Nazis took no account of individual wishes or popularity. They imposed their will and made laws that enabled that. The German judiciary embraced those laws, flawed as they were. The Tribunal found that in doing so they committed crimes against humanity, i.e., violated laws that any people who lay claim to the title of "civilized society" would accept. Among those flawed laws were the forced euthanasia of individuals who were deemed, by others, to have little or no "quality of life", or who were incapable of making their wishes known, by some measure. That sounds awfully familiar, given some of the discussion posted here in recent days.
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.
They used fabricated crises, to be sure. They also looked for scapegoats, people they could hold of as "examples" of what a "superior race" would do to in the name of their laws and concepts of "worthy life" and racial purity. Persons deemed unfit or inferior were disposed of. The Nazi regime held no concept of unalienable rights. For them, the right to live was subject to the whims of the State, the Leader of that State, and the agencies by which those whims were effected, the military, the police, the courts.