The Honecker Trial
The East German Past and the German Future
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6397262 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A James Mcadams (0000-0001-9424-3692, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1996 |
| Volume | 58 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 53-80 |
| Publication date | 1996-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Review of Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0034670500051664 |
| OpenAlex | W2945883742 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 4 |
Fifty years after the Nuremberg tribunals, Germany is once again caught up in a series of controversial trials involving former dictators. This time, officials of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) sit in the docks. Some observers have criticized these proceedings, maintaining that they will result in the imposition of an arbitrary form of “victor's justice.” Others have claimed, in contrast, that the cumbersome GermanRechtsstaat(“state under the law”) will prove incapable of responding to public demands for retribution. In this article, the author maintains that Germany's courts have not been at a loss in answering these complaints. By grounding their judgments in preexisting East German law, the courts have managed to bring some of the GDR's former leaders to justice while at the same time guaranteeing most defendants the full protection of the rule of law. In the process, the courts have even conveyed an important message about the terms under which both German populations will be brought back together again
Constitutional court · Democracy · Economic Justice · German · Political science · Retributive justice · State (computer science · Computer Science · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · European history and politics · German History and Society · History · Law
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,14 |
| Citation span | 1998 - 2020 (23) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |