Hitler's Table Talk

642 JUDGES' SALARIES
is there to give absolutely irrevocable judgment, even if the
world should come to an end as a result, is nonsense. The
judge's primary duty, on the contrary, is to secure law and
order for the community.
The officers of the law must be the best-paid officials of the
State, a corps d'élite whose whole education teaches them not to
take cover behind the Legislature, but to have the courage to
act on their own responsibility. This, it might be objected,
could be tantamount to turning the Law into the handmaid
of political power. Not necessarily; the holders of power are
themselves subject to the law! No Body Judicial conscious of its
responsibilities and willing to assume them will condone a
shameful act. But should the Government act shamefully, the
law is in no position to prevent it. Neither Roman law, the
law of the Middle Ages nor our present code of justice has
ever been, in a position to do that. If the Government of a State
is composed of indifferent individuals, then the Body Judicial
can do nothing to correct the mistakes of the legislators; but
when the reins are in the hands of an honest and capable
legislator, then the law can support him wholeheartedly in his
task of strengthening the bonds of national community, and of
thus laying the ideal foundation on which a healthy and dignified
constitution can be built.
The task of the judge is a mighty one. He must be as ready
to accept responsibility as the legislator himself; he must cooperate
with him in the closest possible manner, so that together
they may protect society from destructive elements and
promote the interests of the community by such means as the
times and the circumstances may from time to time dictate.
If this degree of collaboration is achieved, the Legislature will
find itself relieved of the necessity of for ever having to promulgate
new laws; and no longer will it feel itself called upon to
prescribe exact punishments, ranging from imprisonment to
penal servitude and from penal servitude to the death penalty.
Its task will be restricted to the drawing up of a general code
of justice, under which the judge will have the sole responsibility
of deciding the appropriate punishment—from simple
imprisonment to the death penalty—for the particular crime
committed. As things are, when a court condemns to death