Laying down the law
October 1, 2014
Professor Rande Kostal delivered the 2014 Richard Youard Annual Lecture in Legal History at the Faculty of Law at Oxford University this past May.
His lecture, “Allied Planning for the Denazification of German Law, 1944-45” was based on his forthcoming book, Laying Down the Law: The United States and the Legal Reconstruction of Germany and Japan, 1944-1948, a comparative history of the most ambitious law reform projects ever undertaken.
The book probes how, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States attempted to achieve the permanent demilitarization of Germany and Japan by recourse to the transformative military occupation.
“The thrust of American policy was to destroy the institutional basis of German and Japanese fascism, replacing it with a liberal-democratic constitutional order founded on the rule of law,” said Kostal.
The book explores the extent to which American officials planned and executed the reconstruction of German and Japanese constitutional arrangements, bar associations, judiciaries and substantive criminal law and procedures.
“It assesses the degree to which the racial, political and ideological assumptions influenced American policies and action in Japan and Germany,” said Kostal. The book is also concerned with how their collaboration and resistance to American law reform initiatives succeeded in making ruined fascist states into functioning rule of law states.”
This article appeared in the Western Law 2014 Alumni Magazine.
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