Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

by Hannah Arendt

“Acts of state,” which German jurisprudence even more tellingly calls gerichisfreie or justizlose Hoheitsakte, rest on “an exercise of sovereign power” [E. C. S. Wade in the British Year Book for International Law, 1934] and hence are altogether outside the legal realm, whereas all orders and commands, at least in theory, are still under judicial control. If what Eichmann did had been acts of state, then none of his superiors, least of all Hitler, the head of state, could be judged by any court. The “act of state” theory agreed so well with Dr. Servatius’ general philosophy that it was perhaps not surprising that he should have tried it out again; what was surprising was that he did not fall back on the argument of superior orders as an extenuating circumstance after the judgment had been read and before the sentence was pronounced.)