The Figure of the Witness in International Criminal Tribunals

Name: The Figure of the Witness in International Criminal Tribunals | Memory, Atrocities and Transitional Justice
Brand: Routledge
Price: 52.49 EUR
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Memory, Atrocities and Transitional Justice

Benjamin Thorne(Autor*in)

Routledge (Verlag)

1. Auflage

Erschienen am 5. Oktober 2022

228 Seiten

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Beschreibung

This book analyses how international criminal institutions, and their actors - legal counsels, judges, investigators, registrars - construct witness identity and memory.

Filling an important gap within transitional justice scholarship, this conceptually led and empirically grounded interdisciplinary study takes the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) as a case study. It asks: How do legal witnesses of human rights violations contribute to memory production in transitional post-conflict societies? Witnessing at tribunals entails individuals externalising memories of violations. This is commonly construed within the transitional justice legal scholarship as an opportunity for individuals to ensure their memories are entered into an historical record. Yet this predominant understanding of witness testimony fails to comprehend the nature of memory. Memory construction entails fragments of individual and collective memories within a contestable and contingent framing of the past. Accordingly, the book challenges the claim that international criminal courts and tribunals are able to produce a collective memory of atrocities; as it maintains that witnessing must be understood as a contingent and multi-layered discursive process.

Contributing to the specific analysis of witnessing and memory, but also to the broader field of transitional justice, this book will appeal to scholars and practitioners in these areas, as well as others in legal theory, global criminology, memory studies, international relations, and international human rights.

Rezensionen / Stimmen

'The Figure of the Witness in International Criminal Tribunals' brings welcome attention to the importance of legal archives in accessing the fragmented memories of atrocity. Thorne offers a theoretically innovative and careful analysis of how individual and collective memories are shaped by criminal trials. In doing so, this book offers a crucial contribution to scholarly debates in transitional justice generally and to those concerning Rwanda in particular.

- Nicola Palmer, Reader in Criminal Law, Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London

'This book challenges a foundational premise that witnessing and legal procedure are capable of establishing authoritative historical truths. Developing an original conceptual framework for understanding the role and limits of memory in international courts, the book is an essential theoretical intervention which should help others to articulate questions around the form and function of transitional justice.'

- Dr Catherine Turner, Associate Professor in Law, School of Law, Durham University

'Exploring how legal witnesses of human rights violations contribute to memory production in transitional post-conflict societies, Benjamin Thorne's new book is original and exciting. The book is meticulously researched, offering a conceptually driven and empirically grounded analysis and drawing from an impressive range of scholarly fields. Grappling with concepts such as the 'grey zone' of witnessing, legal witnessing as 'Judgment' and manipulated memories through to the idea of archives as sites of sensory stimulation, Thorne makes a clever and compelling case. The result - a timely and very welcome addition to transitional justice scholarship and practice.'

- Dr Cheryl Lawther Senior Lecturer in Law, School of Law, Queens University Belfast

'Dr Thorne is an adept scholar, capable of spanning fields and disciplines. Here, by locating the witness, the act of witnessing, and legal testimony in their discursive context, he tests the potential, and exposes the limits, of legal process as part of memory production after mass violence. An excellent addition to Transitional Justice studies.'

- Andy Aydin-Aitchison Senior Lecturer in Criminology, University of Edinburgh School of Law

'This richly-informed book develops an original conceptual lens to problematise witnessing and memory in international criminal tribunals. Throughout, it lays bare how the perceived need in international criminal trials for a narrow legal narrative reductively instrumentalises the memories of violence held by victims, particularly at the pre-trial stage. Arguing for a more nuanced view of memory as a dynamic phenomenon, the important contribution of this book to transitional justice lies in how it foregrounds the potential for those fragments of memory found in trial archives to shape a more holistic memory ecology in post-conflict states.'

- Prof Padraig McAuliffe, Professor in Transitional Justice, Law School University of Liverpool

Weitere Details

Weitere Ausgaben

Person

Inhalt

Introduction Chapter

Introduction

Defining Transitional Justice

Context

Research Data and Method

Structuring the Argument

Chapter One: Memory, Witnesses and International Criminal Institutions

Introduction

Origins of the Practice of Transitional Justice: Nuremberg and the Exceptional use of International Law

The symbolic representation of Nuremberg and Human Rights

Eichmann: Law and the Need for Witnesses to Remember

A Discourse of Transitional Justice Scholarship: From International Justice to Local Justice Via International Norms

International Criminal Tribunals and Courts: Witnesses and Testimonial Evidence

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and Defining Legal Witnesses

Conclusion - International Legal Institutions: Spaces of Memory Construction

Chapter Two: Conceptualising the way Legal Witnesses Remember Mass Human Rights Violations

Introduction

Law and the 'Grey Zone' of Witnessing

Bearing Witness

The Grey Zone: Law, Ethics and Legal Witnesses

The 'Muselmann': the lacuna of law and justice or legal witnessing as 'Judgment'

Theoretical lens: conceptualising legal witnessing

Memory: Individual and Collective Components

Manipulated Memory

From Agamben and Ricoeur to an original conceptual framework: analysing the way legal witnesses remember at the ICTR

Discourse and Legal Archives

i The ICTR's 'Black Box': Opening up the archives

The legal production of knowledge

Bringing together the theory, 'Black Box' and the analysis

Conclusion

Chapter Three: The Discursive Battleground of Legal Witnessing, Or, The Active Witness and Their 'Right to Truth'

Introduction

Nowhere and Everywhere: The Discursive Reach of the Witness at the ICTR

'Bears in a China Closet': The discursivity of investigations and indictments

The Right to Truth: Who's Speaking?

Mass Atrocities and the Right to Truth

Victims-Witnesses

The discursivity of the 'witness' vs the right to truth: universality, agency and collective legal stories

Conclusion

Chapter Four: Memories of Violence and the Limitations of Law

Introduction

Law, Genocide and Legal Memories of Mass Violence

The ICTR and the crime of Genocide

Genocidal violence: Layers and fluidity of events, actions and agents

Beyond Law: The Plurality of Violent Memories

Discursive restrictions of witness memories

The 'Grey Zone' of legal witnessing

The plurality of memory

Conclusion

Chapter Five: Critiquing Liberal Legality and Collective Memory

Introduction

Legal Actors as Memory Producers

Testifying in the 'Interests of Justice'

The discursive practices of Disclosure

Producing a Legal Memory of Rape and Sexual Violence

Liberal Legality and Collective Memory: A Critique

A critique of advocacy for a legal collective memory of atrocities

Plural vs Collective memory

A Conceptual Alternative

Conclusion

Chapter Six: Fragments of Legal Memories

Introduction

Legal Archives: Plurality, Self and 'Others'

Plural Fragments of Memory

Intergenerational Transmission of Legal Memories: Words and Images

Legal Memory: The Empirical Potential and Challenges of the ICTR Archive

Conclusion

Epilogue - An Atrocity Archive: Sensory Expression of Past-Present-Future

Conclusion

Introduction

Why Conceptual Insights Matter

Contribution to Knowledge

Framing the Books Contributions

Future Research Directions

Bibliography

Appendix

Appendix One: Case Studies

Appendix Two: List of Data

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