Abstract
The "Nuremberg Code" is a fundational text for normative framework of clinical trials on human subjects. This section of the judgment of the Doctors' Trial (1947) states not ethical maxims for ethicists, but criteria of legality for the criminal judge. The deformations of the "Nuremberg Code" in French translations and adaptations accepted as a standard reference text since the fifties, are an integral part of its receipt. These translations made to forget the legal anchoring of the original text.