The Grudge Informer Case and Its Sources

The Hart–Fuller debate centered on a real dilemma from post-war Germany. In 1944 a woman, wishing to be rid of her husband, reported to the authorities remarks he had made criticizing Hitler. Under Nazi-era laws he was sentenced to death, though the sentence was not carried out and he was sent to serve at the front.

After the war, in 1949, she was prosecuted in a West German court. Hart, relying on a brief English-language report of the case, said the court had convicted her on the ground that the Nazi statutes were contrary to the 'sound conscience and sense of justice of all decent human beings'.

Hart argued it would have been more honest to pass a retroactive law openly punishing such informers. Later, in 1960, the scholar H. O. Pappe showed that the report had misdescribed the court's reasoning, which did not rely on declaring the statutes invalid in that way. The case teaches a lesson about sources: influential arguments can rest on flawed reports.