As the rule of law comes under attack today, Lawyers Without Rights tragically portrays the grim possible outcomes for when the just rule of law disappears and is replaced by an arbitrary rule by law that sweeps aside the rights and dignity of selected populations. The fate of Jewish lawyers in Nazi Germany is more than a historical footnote; it is a siren that a system of justice free of improper political considerations remains fragile and should never be taken for granted.

The 2019 release of the English translation marked an exciting new step for the joint project of the American Bar Association and the Bundesrechtsanwaltskammer (German Federal Bar). Its release underscored the shared interest of the two bar associations in passing on to future generations the horrors of the Holocaust, as well as conveying the importance of the rule of law and the ill effects of when lawyers, among others, remain silent in the face of injustice.

Lawyers Without Rights captures the story of the occupational bans on Jewish lawyers and jurists in Berlin, the capital city and home to 3,400 attorneys at the outset of the Nazi regime. Of those, 43% were of Jewish origin, the largest group of any city in Germany. This story was first told in German in the late 1990's and revised in 2007. The book includes more than 1,600 bios of lawyers in Berlin who were forbidden to practice law because of their Jewish ancestry and details the individual fate of 1,404 of them.

By late 1938, German law had eliminated all but a few dozen Jewish legal "consultants" from the profession. Hundreds subsequently died in concentration camps or committed suicide; others fled the Nazi regime emigrating across the world, including more than 200 of them who eventually sought permanent refuge in the United States. A few, like Berlin lawyer Hanna Katz, a pioneer in the practice of law by women in Germany and whose career is detailed in this book, earned U.S. law degrees. Katz resided in New York and later became a member of the American Bar Association.

This release includes three significant additions - forewords from the Honorable Stephen G. Breyer, retired associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; Benjamin B. Ferencz (1920-2023), the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor; and Ronald D. Abramson, a Washington, D.C., lawyer and philanthropist whose family foundation, the Galena-Yorktown Foundation, provided support for this book. With minor exceptions, the second edition of Simone Ladwig-Winters' book has been presented in its entirety, including prefaces from the Berlin bar, the author’s insights into her research, notes and abbreviations.