Why does a court need to decide whether the Holocaust occurred or not?

It was the Holocaust denier who sued the professor, not the other way around. Irving argued that his absurd position on the Holocaust was perfectly rational and consistent with the evidence, and that Lipstadt had libeled him by saying otherwise. So in court Lipstadt's team had to show Lipstadt was right -- and that meant showing just how full of holes Irving's stance was, and how intellectually threadbare Holocaust denial actually is.

A court cannot decide that the Holocaust happened. It's popular opinion that decides anything and everything in this world. If it did happen, a court still cannot decide that it did. I mean, they can rule that it did happen. But you can easily deny anything and make an appeal.

What I guess I mean to say is that one shouldn't decide themselves on anything a court rules on. The person themselves should investigate it and come to a conclusion based on their own findings. Because there have been times when a court rules a defendant guilty when later evidence is shown to disprove that the person did anything wrong at all. There've been documentaries on people who've been to death row that are freed after the evidence has shown them innocent. Though, in some cases, the prosecutor refuses to allow them freedom because they are too arrogant to allow themselves defeat.




Denying an historical event doesn't mean approving it even if it indeed happened...

The whole basis of the defense, and the movie, is that it wasn't the Holocaust that was on trial. It was whether Irving's lawsuit accusing Lipstadt of libel had any merit. She was on trial, not him and not the holocaust. The court did not even bother entering arguments about whether the holocaust happened because as the judge said in his decision, that was a task for historians and not a judicial issue.