In Search of “Ivan the Terrible”: John Demjanjuk and the Judicial Use of Ironic Argumentation

Abstract

This essay analyzes the role that irony plays in legal argumentation. The author argues that the case of John Demjanjuk illustrates how both defendants and prosecutors in popular trials can take advantage of some of the inconsistencies and contradictions that exist in legal debates. In the Demjanjuk affair, defense attorneys were able to save their client's life in 1988 by arguing that he may be been at Sobibor instead of Treblinka, but this position would ultimately be appropriated by other prosecutors in denaturalization proceedings. Ironically, some of the same evidence that was used to “free” Demjanjuk from the characterization of “Ivan the Terrible” was used by those who still considered him to be a “Wachmann” and war criminal.