Book Review: The Jews of the Channel Islands and the Rule of Law, 1940-!1945
| Date | 01 September 2002 |
| Author | David Meltzer |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466390201100314 |
| Published date | 01 September 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
DAVI D FRASER, The Jews of the Channel Islands and the Rule of Law, 1940–1945.
Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2000, 272 pp., £39.50 (hbk).
Quite simply, this book does what it says on the cover. As such it should be compul-
sory reading for all lawyers and historians, as well as the population at large. Despite
the narrow focus of the book, with ‘official’ Jews numbering 12 in Jersey, four in
Guernsey and one in Sark, this is a compelling book. Arguably, the very fact of dealing
with a few individuals is a strength, allowing the reader to comprehend the personal
impact of quasi-legal justifications where huge figures simply numb. The very focus
renders human the betrayal by a legal system (as all over Europe) of people whom an
ideology sought to dehumanize. A key part of this process, laid bare by the book, is
that legal bureaucracies served, by language and deeds, to construct an abstract view
of the Nazis’ victims. Fraser has done a tremendous service to the history of the
Second World War and Britain’s part in it, in addition to setting out a case study on
historiography and linking all this to legal philosophy. The sources and techniques of
law and history are very similar, ‘Lawyers speak for and from documents, as do
historians’ (p. 145), which only makes the unravelling of deliberate obfuscation from
both sets all the more difficult and necessary. In terms of the law not only are diffi-
cult legal issues examined from a theoretical point of view but a clear practical example
is demonstrated as to the limits and functions of law and especially lawyers. Apart
from anything else, when discussing law as having some inherent value simply because
it is the law, this work shows that there is no need to imagine various iniquitous laws
– they are there in the flesh in history, if only we can bring ourselves to see them.
Further, small numbers of people concerned have a legal as well as an historical point:
the rule of law should, especially, protect the few, as one of its highest principles. The
way in which a fact, of limited numbers, is examined in different disciplines with
different results and implications is indicative of the book as a whole.
All of the above is reflected in the structure of the book. First the history of what
actually happened is carefully set out, giving a general picture and at the same time
noting points as they arise concerning the bases of issues of practical legal arguments
and of jurisprudential theories. Specific case studies are detailed concerning those
deported to German camps, Aryanization on the Islands and the administrators of the
whole process. The implications for legal positivism are clearly spelled out. The first
implication is that strict adherence to the law, as if it were something of particular
worth existing in its own right, is only as worthy as the system it is being used to legit-
imize. Certainly the legal professionals felt it their duty under the law to actively
denounce their clients, easily accepting the fact and theory of the offence of being a
Jew, and quickly fell into using Nazi terms. Not developed in the book is the line that
this is directly analogous on the concept of justifying government action as being
directed by the word of God. In both cases the contingency of the political/social/
economic system is obscured by the curtain of interpreted religion or the rule of law,
which are upheld, in theory and practice, to be above human distortions and there-
fore to completely legitimize the status quo. This, further, leads onto the question as
to whether it is precisely in those countries with a traditionally high level of adher-
ence to and respect for the rule of law that the worst abuses of the law as a system
occur. The further debate into which the book would feed is whether Britain suffered
a mortal blow to its society by the war’s corrosive effects on public and private values.
Certainly noted is the problem that English law has no political set of values estab-
lished in the modern era (as has every other comparable state, by revolution, defeat
or independence) and so no normative or ethical values acknowledged as part of the
law. It is not possible to fully answer the problem of drawing absolute lines about
positivism or natural law, in this or any other work, though as a practical set of
examples this study serves to focus minds and arguments extremely efficiently. Fraser
BOOK REVIEWS 459
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