When Judges Are Arrested: The Story of Günther Joël
"It could never happen here" can become "holy shit, it's here" very quickly.
For those following along, the collapse of American democracy is currently in Stage 4: Undermining Institutions and Capturing the Referees. For a glimpse into the near future, check out “The Road to Ruin: How Democracies Unravel into Authoritarian Regimes.”
When the arbiters of justice become targets of the state, a dangerous line has been crossed. In a functioning democracy, judges are the guardians of legal norms, standing impartial between the powerful and the people. So what does it mean when a judge is led away in handcuffs from her own courtroom? This troubling scenario is unfolding in the United States today – and it echoes an ominous chapter from history.
In April 2025, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested by federal agents, accused of “obstruction” after allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant avoid a courthouse arrest. The image of a sitting judge in custody sent shockwaves through the legal community. It harkens back to a time when the rule of law crumbled under political pressure: Nazi Germany’s purge of its judiciary. In the 1930s, judges who dared to uphold justice for Jews and dissidents were not only removed – some were even arrested or worse, as the Nazi regime dismantled any judicial independence.
The story of Günther Joël, a German judge who tried to defend the law and was ultimately coerced into serving a tyrannical system, provides a cautionary tale. And the parallels between that history and current events sound an urgent alarm.
Nazi Germany’s War on Independent Judges
When Adolf Hitler rose to power in January 1933, one of his first targets was the judiciary itself. The Nazi regime understood that to entrench its rule, it needed courts that would enforce Nazi ideology rather than the rule of law. By April 1933, Hitler’s government passed a so-called “Restoration of Professional Civil Service” law that, in effect, purged Jewish judges, socialist judges, and other political opponents from the bench. Under this early antisemitic legislation, scores of jurists were forced out simply for being Jewish or for refusing to embrace Nazi doctrine. Judges who had defended liberal legal norms or tried to protect Jews and dissidents found themselves ousted. In their place, the Nazis installed loyalists and created new judicial bodies to sideline any remaining independent voices.
The coordination (Gleichschaltung) of the justice system was swift and ruthless. All bar associations and judges’ groups were merged into the Nazi League of German Jurists. Those few judges who showed hesitation in enforcing Nazi policies were pressured or removed. Hitler openly demanded the political “reliability” of courts. When the Reich Supreme Court acquitted some defendants (like those in the Reichstag Fire trial), Hitler didn’t tolerate it. Instead, he formed a new extra-constitutional tribunal – the notorious People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof) – to handle “political cases” and treason trials. This court, led by fanatical Nazis such as Judge Roland Freisler, became an instrument of terror, condemning thousands to death on trumped-up charges in the name of “healthy folk sentiment” rather than evidence.
By the late 1930s, the German judiciary had largely been cowed or co-opted. Judges who once might have defended Jewish defendants’ rights or insisted on due process for regime critics were long gone. In their stead were men who bent to Hitler’s will – or zealously exceeded it. The transformation was so complete that after World War II, Nazi judges and Justice Ministry officials were themselves put on trial for “judicial murder” and crimes against humanity. But how did individual judges navigate this descent? The journey of Günther Joël offers a revealing example of how a principled lawman can be systematically crushed and reshaped by a tyrannical regime.
Günther Joël: From Upholding the Law to Enforcing Tyranny
In the early years of Nazi rule, Günther Joël was a young state attorney who tried to do the unthinkable – hold Nazi perpetrators accountable to the law. Joël initially pursued justice even when the accused were agents of the regime itself. In 1934, he was a senior prosecutor in Wuppertal, Germany, overseeing an investigation into horrific abuses at Kemna, one of the Nazis’ early concentration camps for political prisoners. Together with a local prosecutor, Gustav Winckler, Joël gathered evidence of SA (Stormtrooper) guards torturing inmates.
In the wake of the Night of the Long Knives (Hitler’s purge of the SA leadership in mid-1934), the Nazi hierarchy briefly allowed scrutiny of some excesses. Joël seized the moment: he secured witness testimony from former prisoners and even got Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess to authorize a probe into Kemna’s atrocities. For a short time, it seemed that the rule of law might prevail – that Nazi officials who beat and brutalized dissidents could be prosecuted.
That hope was short-lived. The reaction from the Nazi power structure was ferocious. As soon as word spread of Joël’s investigation, local Nazi leaders unleashed a campaign of intimidation. Winckler, Joël’s partner in the inquiry, faced death threats and was dragged before a Nazi Party court on trumped-up charges of disloyalty. Nazi Justice Ministry officials in Berlin, instead of backing their prosecutor, ordered the case files sealed and handed over to the Party apparatus. By early 1935, the Kemna investigation was effectively quashed under pressure. Joël himself, seeing the writing on the wall, was forced to back down; in a final report in 1936, he recommended suppressing the entire case to avoid further “disturbances”. The message from his superiors was clear: enforcing the law against Nazi offenders was a career-ending (if not life-threatening) move.
After this chastening episode, Günther Joël’s path took a dark turn. Faced with the choice of resistance or survival, he chose survival. Over the next few years, Joël was gradually absorbed into the Nazi legal machine. He joined the Nazi Party and even became an SS officer as his career advanced. By the 1940s, the one-time idealist had been transformed into an enforcer of Nazi policy. Joël rose to serve as a top legal advisor in the Reich Ministry of Justice and later as Chief Prosecutor in Hamm, Westphalia. In these roles, he helped implement some of the regime’s most draconian measures.
One example stands out: the “Nacht und Nebel” (Night and Fog) decree, a secret directive from Hitler that aimed to make political dissidents in occupied Europe disappear without a trace. As Chief Prosecutor, Joël oversaw numerous Night and Fog cases. He had the authority – and responsibility – to ensure fair process, yet instead he allowed the illegal abductions and secret trials to proceed unchecked, effectively legitimizing the disappearance of defendants. A U.S. tribunal later found that Joël failed to stop his subordinates from applying this blatantly unlawful decree, making him personally responsible for the injustices that followed. Joël also wielded judicial power over occupied territories: from September 1942 to March 1943, he reviewed and gave final approval to nearly 100 death sentences against Polish civilians, executions carried out by German courts with no regard for law or humanity. By then, Joël was no longer the man who had once tried to prosecute Nazi crimes – he was an active participant in the Nazi “justice” system that murdered innocents under a veneer of legality.
In 1947, after the fall of the Third Reich, Günther Joël stood in the dock as a defendant in the Nuremberg “Judges’ Trial.” The Allied tribunal held Nazi jurists to account for “destroying law and justice in Germany, and then utilizing the emptied forms of legal process for persecution and extermination”. Joël was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in enforcing Night and Fog and rubber-stamping executions. He was sentenced to ten years in prison – ironically, the same length of time as many of his victims’ sentences, which he had ensured ended in death. Joël’s story is tragic: a man who once tried to uphold the rule of law ultimately became a cog in a machine that annihilated it. It illustrates how relentless political pressure, fear, and careerist temptation can corrupt even those who know better. And it stands as a warning, decades later, of what can happen when a nation’s judges are subjugated to an authoritarian agenda.
Parallels Today: Judges Under Fire in America
It would be easy to believe that the fall of judicial independence seen in 1930s Germany couldn’t happen today. Yet recent events in the United States have sent a chill through courtrooms and law schools alike. Judge Hannah Dugan’s arrest on April 25, 2025, marked an unprecedented moment in modern American history. Federal agents led her away from her courthouse, alleging that by guiding an immigrant defendant through a side door, she “intentionally misdirected federal agents” and obstructed an immigration enforcement operation. Judge Dugan, a respected jurist with a reputation for fairness, suddenly found herself portrayed as a criminal. The charges – concealing an individual to prevent his arrest – stem directly from her judicial actions in court, a context where judges traditionally have wide discretion to ensure fair proceedings.
The political overtones of the case were unmistakable. Kash Patel, the Trump-appointed FBI Director, took to social media to accuse Dugan of helping an “illegal alien” and boasted that agents had “chased down” the man she allegedly tried to protect. Soon after, Trump-administration officials amplified the message: Pam Bondi, the U.S. Attorney General, went on national television to call Judge Dugan “deranged” and warned that any judges who defy the president’s immigration crackdown will face prosecution. “We are sending a very strong message today,” Bondi declared, equating judges upholding individuals’ rights with criminals. “If you are harboring a fugitive… we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.” Such rhetoric – a top law enforcement official vowing to punish members of the judiciary for decisions the regime dislikes – is virtually unheard of in a healthy democracy. In fact, it was the language and rhetoric of an authoritarian purge.
Judge Dugan’s arrest did not occur in isolation. It caps a series of confrontations between the Trump administration and the judiciary. The administration has repeatedly lashed out at judges whose rulings thwarted its policies. From immigration to election cases, judges have been derided as “so-called judges” (or worse) in tweets and speeches. What’s different now is the escalation: using federal law enforcement to actually arrest a judge sends a new and alarming signal. As the Guardian noted, Dugan’s case is just the “latest in a string of attacks” on judges by an executive branch determined to overhaul immigration law at any cost. Wisconsin’s Governor Tony Evers spoke out after Dugan’s detention, accusing the administration of using “dangerous rhetoric to attack and undermine our judiciary at every level.” Lawyers and judges’ associations warned that the independence of the judiciary is under direct assault. Even judges who haven’t been personally targeted cannot miss the message when a colleague is perp-walked for doing her job: step out of line, and you could be next.
Erosion of Judicial Independence: Early Warning Signs
History teaches that the erosion of judicial independence begins subtly. It rarely starts with mass arrests or blatant show trials. In the Weimar Republic’s final days, few could imagine German judges would soon be complicit in crimes against humanity. But the cracks appeared early: new laws that “coordinated” courts with ruling-party ideology, officials who demonized judges as obstacles to the people’s will, and a culture of fear that discouraged judicial courage. By the time judges were openly violating law and sending innocents to their deaths, the judiciary’s collapse was a foregone conclusion – the silent coup had already happened in chambers and conference rooms years prior.
In America today, experts see troubling signs of a similar pattern. Political leaders attacking judges’ integrity, calling them biased or “above the law,” is a major red flag. When Attorney General Bondi suggests that judges think they are “beyond… the law”, she flips the script, implying that independent jurists are an unlawful element rather than an equal branch of government. The administration’s insistence that “nobody is above the law” might sound unassailable – except that it’s being used to justify expanding executive power over the judiciary.
The irony is thick: in the name of the law, the very foundations of legal impartiality are being shaken. Just as Nazi legal theorists spoke of “healthy folk sentiment” superseding abstract justice, some modern officials imply that government goals should override judicial checks and balances. This is how the slide begins. Judges might start self-censoring, opting not to confront the government in controversial cases, for fear of repercussions. Some might take early retirement rather than serve in an environment of intimidation. And potential future judges – the bright young lawyers considering a career on the bench – could think twice, worried that donning the robe might one day make them a target.
The public, too, can become inured to the undermining of the courts. Each incremental step – an inflammatory tweet here, an unusual arrest there – can be rationalized as a one-off or an exception. But the pattern is what matters. In Germany, by the time everyday people realized that their judges were no longer protectors of rights, it was too late. Courts had been converted into engines of the regime. We are not at that point in the United States, not by a long stretch. American judges across the country continue to rule against the government without fear, and many officials still respect the judiciary’s role. Yet the rule of law is a muscle that atrophies if not exercised. Every time a judge is punished for doing the right thing, that muscle weakens.
The Stark Warning from History
The FBI’s arrest of a judge in America would have been unthinkable not long ago. Now it’s a reality – and a warning. Günther Joël’s life story illustrates the peril of a judiciary that bends to the will of the powerful. He started with convictions and ended up compromised, not entirely by choice but by a series of pressures and concessions that accumulated until nothing of justice was left. Judge Hannah Dugan’s situation, albeit vastly different in scope and context, is a whisper of that same warning. She acted on her conscience and interpretation of the law; for that, she was treated as a criminal. If such treatment becomes normalized, how many judges will continue to stand up for what is right?
The lesson is clear: the time to defend judicial independence is now, before it collapses further. The judiciary is often called the “least dangerous” branch of government – it wields neither sword nor purse, only judgment. But that also makes it vulnerable. It relies on respect from the other branches and the public’s confidence. When a regime – any regime, left or right – starts using handcuffs and indictments to intimidate judges, it chips away at that confidence and the very idea of checks and balances. What follows is a descent into arbitrary rule, where legal outcomes are preordained by political dictates, and where citizens can no longer rely on courts to protect their rights.
We have seen this movie before. In the 1930s, each subtle change in Germany’s legal landscape paved the way for a full-blown nightmare where law became an instrument of oppression. By the time the general public realized what had happened, judges of integrity had been jailed or silenced, and the courts had become a charade. America is not Nazi Germany, but the parallels at this moment are too stark to ignore. A judge was arrested for standing by the law as she saw it; others are being threatened for doing the same.
The story of Günther Joël and the fate of Germany’s judges show that the collapse of justice can happen anywhere, if people look away long enough. We must not look away. Defending the independence of our judges is not an abstract ideal; it is a concrete barrier standing between freedom and tyranny. When judges are arrested for doing their jobs, that barrier is under attack. The time to reinforce it – through public outcry, legal challenges, and unambiguous support for the rule of law – is right now. History will not have to repeat itself if we heed its warnings. The stakes could not be higher: a society without independent judges is a society without justice. And without justice, democracy itself cannot survive.
Sources:
Harvard Law School Library: Nuremberg Trials Project