IN PERHAPS the most powerful moment in the 1961 film classic, “Judgment at Nuremberg,” the American jurist portrayed by Spencer Tracy confronts convicted German Judge Ernst Janning in his cell. Judge Janning, a Teutonic scholar and onetime celebrated liberal played by Burt Lancaster, confesses that he did not realize his disregard for the rule of law would lead to catastrophe. The Tracy character, Judge Dan Haywood, sharply reminds his antagonist that it came to that the very first time he threw a case.
That same principle – that the rule of law is an absolute that cannot be suspended or ignored without dire consequences – is at the root of an extraordinary conference that will be held next month at the very site where Adolph Eichmann and an assortment of legal and judicial functionaries devised the “final solution” to the “Jewish question.” Chairing the conference at the Wannsee Villa is former New York Chief Judge Sol Wachtler.
