Douglas Morris is both a legal historian and a criminal defense attorney for indigent clients in New York City. He has published widely on twentieth-century German legal history and was a recipient of the 1998 Thurgood Marshall Award from the Association of the Bar of the City of New York for serving 'as pro bono counsel to a human being under a sentence of death'.

Introduction; 1. Setting the scene of a Jewish lawyer, like Fraenkel, in nazi Germany; 2. Fraenkel as a social democrat practicing law in nazi Germany; 3. Fraenkel as an essayist supporting the illegal underground; 4. Fraenkel as a scholar renouncing the nazi regime's dual state; 5. Thinking about legal justifications for sabotaging a tyrannical regime; Conclusion. The Ernst Fraenkel dilemma.