Seeking justice in the courtroom and beyond : confronting mass atrocity in law and literature
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Seeking Justice takes as its starting point the growing prominence of legal mechanisms in censuring war and conflict related atrocities. It considers 1945 and the establishment of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as a watershed moment that ushered in a new era in humanity's quest for post-atrocity justice. The historic decision, however, did not end the search for justice. Attempting to balance the scales of justice, legal institutions faced a crisis of incommensurability between the extraordinary crimes and basic elements of ordinary legal justice -- the goals of the process, especially retribution, its procedural form, and its resolution in a final judgment. In the process of overcoming these challenges of incommensurability, legal institutions -- the Nuremberg tribunal, the Israeli Court in the Eichmann trial and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission - imagined anew what justice is and should be in the aftermath of atrocity. Producing new notions of justice: enlightenment as justice, narrative as justice, and storytelling as justice, these institutions highlighted some aspects of justice, while marginalizing others. Stepping beyond the boundaries of the legal field, Seeking Justice examines cultural narratives that react - directly or explicitly - to the work of legal mechanisms of justice. The turn to the literary, from journalistic reports on legal proceedings to novels, plays, and films that fictionally engage with the pursuit of justice, my work sheds light on those elements of justice that remain absent, unaccounted for or marginalized in process of metaphorization: the desire for revenge, the dangers of omniscient narrative about the past, and the longing for conclusion and resolution. Bringing together the legal and the literary, Seeking Justice explores humanity's deep belief or desire to believe in the possibility of delivering justice in the aftermath of atrocity and the ongoing challenges it must face as it confronts extraordinary crimes in the courtroom and beyond.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Keydar, Renana, Ms |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Comparative Literature. |
| Primary advisor | Eshel, Amir |
| Thesis advisor | Eshel, Amir |
| Thesis advisor | Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich |
| Thesis advisor | Meyler, Bernadette |
| Thesis advisor | Naimark, Norman M |
| Thesis advisor | Shemtov, Vered Karti |
| Advisor | Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich |
| Advisor | Meyler, Bernadette |
| Advisor | Naimark, Norman M |
| Advisor | Shemtov, Vered Karti |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Renana Keydar. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Comparative Literature. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Renana Keydar
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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