This book unlocks the look, sound, smell, taste, and feel of justice for massive human rights abuses. Twenty-nine expert authors examine the dynamics of the five human senses in how atrocity is perceived, remembered, and condemned. This book is chockful of images. It serves up remarkably diverse content. It treks around the globe: from Pacific war crimes trials in the aftermath of the Second World War to Holocaust proceedings in contemporary Germany, France, and Israel; from absurd show trials in Communist Czechoslovakia to international courtrooms in Arusha, Phnom Penh, and The Hague. Readers embark on a journey that transcends myriad dimensions, including photographic representations of grandfatherly old torturers in Argentina, narco-trafficking in Mexico, colonialisation in India, disinformation and misinformation pixelated in cyberspace, environmental degradation in Cambodia, militarism in Northern Ireland, and civil rights activism in Atlanta. Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions reimagines what an atrocity means, reconsiders what drives the manufacture of law, and reboots the role of courtrooms and other mechanisms in the pursuit of justice. It unveils how law translates sensory experience into its procedures and institutions, and how humanistic inputs shape perceptions of right and wrong. This book thereby offers a refreshing primer on the underappreciated role of aesthetics, time, and emotion in the world of law.
Drumbl and Fournet have done us all a great service in knitting together – in a single, powerfully imagined, volume – these essays about how we might experience the institutionalisation of judgment in atrocity trials.
– Gerry Simpson, Professor of Public International Law, LSE Law School (London).
Contributions to this volume offer a unique opportunity to delve into law’s hidden landscape using the primary reality of the five senses.
– Marina Aksenova, Assistant Professor in Comparative and International Criminal Law, IE Law School (Madrid).
Volume editor:
Mark A. Drumbl,
Caroline Fournet
Imprint: Martinus Nijhoff
Volume: 6
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 155mm,
Spine: 41mm
Weight: 1.048kg
ISBN: 9789004677944
ISBN 10: 9004677941
Series: Studies in International Criminal Law
Pages: 556
Publication Date: 08 August 2024
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgements List of Figures Notes on Contributors Introduction Mark A. Drumbl and Caroline Fournet Part 1 Shows and Cases: Showcasing(s) in the Courtroom 1 Optical Allusions, Indecency, and Injustice in the Trial of Japanese War Criminals James Burnham Sedgwick 2 ‘The Show Must Go On’: The Trials and Tribulations of Ludmila Brožová-Polednová Barbora Holá 3 Atrocity Then, Trial Now: The Aesthetics, Acoustics, and Visualities of Prosecuting Oskar Gröning Caroline Fournet and Mark A. Drumbl 4 Performing Justice: The Trial of Bruno Dey and Its Protagonists Moritz Vormbaum and Jara Streuer Part 2 Translating the Senses into Law and Judgment 5 Does Music Create Killers?: The Role of Music in the Commission of Violent Crimes Agnieszka Jachec-Neale 6 The Stench of Death: The Olfactory of Genocide in International Criminal Trials Carola Lingaas 7 The Sound and Taste of Atrocities: From Cambodia in the 1970s to Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s Audrey Fino 8 The Age-Impunity Rhetoric in Trials for Crimes Committed during the Argentine Genocide (1975–1983) Adriana Taboada and Lior Zylberman Part 3 Filtering the Sensory: Language, Evidence, Culture, and Procedure 9 Sounds of Atrocity Prosecutions: Intersubjective Interpreting as a Key Ingredient for Effective and Fair Trials in Multilingual and Multicultural War Crimes Courtrooms Dragana Spencer 10 The Mind’s Eye: The Invisibility of Culture in Individual Criminal Responsibility Vera Piovesan 11 Versions of the Truth: Disinformation and Prosecuting Atrocities Emma J. Breeze 12 Putting Things in Play: The Spectacle of Criminal Justice Sebastián Machado Part 4 Staging, Re-enactment, Film 13 A Trial without a Defendant: The Mock Trial of Dr. Josef Mengele in Jerusalem Yehudit Dori-Deston 14 Reconstructing the Crime: Memory, Re-enactments, and Space in Atrocity Investigations Maria Elander 15 Staging Atrocity Prosecutions: Re-enactments and Pre-enactments of Atrocity Trials in Theatre Hanna Luise Kroll and Kerstin Wilhelms 16 Entertaining Selectivity: ‘Narcos’, Netflix, and International Crimes Javier S. Eskauriatza Part 5 Sensibility Divides: North–South, Imperial–Colonized, State–Society 17 Hearing Voices: Victim and Witness Demographics at the International Criminal Court Annika Jones 18 Ugly Atrocities, Cathartic Prosecutions: International Criminal Law as Emotional Salve Randle C. DeFalco 19 Appropriating Sovereignty through Trials: British Imperial Expansion and Staging of Oppression through Law Aman Kumar 20 ‘Protecting the Environment Is Not Illegal’: Ecological Activism, the Visualities of Law and Justice, and the Land Concession Crisis in Cambodia Stéphanie Benzaquen-Gautier Part 6 Reflections on Aesthetics and Methods 21 Veteran Mobilisation, Prosecutions, and the Contested Legacy of the Past in Northern Ireland: Deconstructing the ‘Witch-Hunt’ Narrative Kevin Hearty and Kieran McEvoy 22 Negative Aesthetic Experiences of Prosecuting the Barely Alive Shannon Fyfe 23 Elaborating on the ‘Asymmetry’ of Prosecuting Aged Defendants for Atrocities: A ‘Multimodal-Visual Argumentation’ Perspective Konstantinos P. Tsinas 24 Atrocity Prosecutions, Cultural Representation, and the Invisible Older Individual Kirsten J. Fisher 25 The Sights, Sounds, and Silences of International Law During the Cold War Mark A. Drumbl Index
Mark A. Drumbl (J.S.D., 2002, Columbia University), is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law and Director of the Transnational Law Institute at Washington and Lee University. Caroline Fournet, (Ph.D., 2003, Faculty of Law, University of Leicester) is Professor of Law at the University of Exeter, UK.
Reviews for Sights, Sounds, and Sensibilities of Atrocity Prosecutions
“This book asks a remarkable and deceptively simple question: How do we hear, taste, smell, feel, and see justice? Mark Drumbl and Caroline Fournet have done us all a great service in knitting together - in a single, powerfully imagined, volume - these essays about how we might experience the institutionalisation of judgment in atrocity trials. Reams have been written on the intellectual, juridical and ethical response to war crimes or crimes against humanity. This unusual – singular – book describes our emotional and aesthetic relations to these terrible wrongs and the forms of politico-legal reckonings that attempt to come to terms with them.” Gerry Simpson, Professor of Public International Law, LSE Law School (London). “Law is inherently multidimensional. It is not just an analytical tool for achieving social order, accountability or reconciliation, but it is also one of the filters through which reality is perceived and processed. The initial absorption happens naturally through the senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. Contributions to this volume offer a unique opportunity to delve into law’s hidden landscape using the primary reality of the five senses. The entire volume makes surgically precise incision on the body of international law as we know it.” Marina Aksenova, Assistant Professor in Comparative and International Criminal Law, IE Law School (Madrid).
