The Judicial Application Of Radbruch Formula

At the end of the Second World War,the Nazi regime collapsed and the victors tried the international crimes committed by Germany.Germany’s legal system,which had been severely damaged by the Nazi regime,experienced the trial retroactive to the victors again,and the rechtssicherheit and authority of the legal system were seriously damaged.To return to the German legal system before the break of legitimacy and eliminate the influence of the Nazis,the biggest problem is how to solve the conflict between the Nazi law and the old law.Radbruch formula protects the justice value of law and creates a new normative foundation for saving and rebuilding legal authority.Therefore,this paper mainly discusses the judicial application and significance of Radbruch formula.The first part of this paper focuses on the main idea and the composition of Radbruch formula.The law related to reality is destined to serve the legal value.The legal value of rechtssicherheit,justice and purposiveness of law constitute Radbruch formula.Any law that lacks these three values may constitute a formal legal crime.However,the value of these three kinds of law is not always the most important value,and it is always in the dynamic balance.When these three kinds of law value conflict,Radbruch formula provides the logic criterion to solve the conflict,which are Intolerability formula and Disavorwal formula.The second part of this paper focuses on the judicial application of Radbruch formula.The trial of “Puttfarken” and “Assistant Executioners” was conducted in strict accordance with the provisions of the existing Nazi law.The judgment of the Berlin Wall shooting case uses the Intolerability formula to negate the effect of Nazi law.The judgment of the Jewish nationality case is to deny the Nazi law effect of depriving Jewish nationality by using the Disavorwal formula.The application of the two sub formulas in difficult cases provides a normative basis for the legal liquidation of Nazi behavior after the war.The third part of this paper mainly analyses three question of the formula: destroying the Rechtssicherheit of the law,no clear standard and violating the principle of legality.However,Radbruch formula’s claim on the spirit of justice does not violate the principle of legal positivism.On the contrary,it is beneficial to save the legal authority to pursue justice on the basis of norms.Secondly,the denial of the validity of law by Radbruch’s formula is not on the moral level,but on the basis of the value position of law,which lays a normative foundation for the reconstruction of legal authority.Radbruch provided normative logic for Germany’s trial of Nazis after the war.Justice is the eternal value of law,and the pursuit of justice is the eternal direction of law.The reconstruction of legal authority should not only remedy the rights of the parties,but also eliminate the remains of "unjust" Nazi law on the basis of norms.