General Discussion

and realized how important it is that many of our judges and federal employees are refusing to go along with inhumane and illegal orders.

For people not familiar with the movie, it takes place in occupied Germany in 1948. It is fiction based on fact about 4 judges on trial for crimes against humanity because during the Nazi regime they went along with orders to convict innocent people who were then executed or sent to concentration camps where they died. They were tried before a US tribunal in the same German courtroom where they had sentenced people to death.

One of the judges being tried told a tribunal judge that he never thought that his convictions of people in court would ever become the horrors that occurred under Nazis. The tribunal judge answered him, "It came to that the very first time that you sentenced someone to death that you knew was innocent."

In other words, you prevent atrocities from happening by refusing at the start to cooperate with inhumane and illegal practices.