Genocide, State Crime and the Law: In the Name of the State

ISBN-13: 9780415680271 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 256 str.

Jennifer Balint

Opis

Genocide, State Crime, and the Law argues that genocide and other forms of state crime must be located in relation to cultural, political and legal processes if they are to be properly understood and addressed. Discussing a series of case studies of genocide -- in Armenia, Nazi Germany, Cambodia, South Africa, Ethiopia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia -- the book is oriented towards two post-conflict problems: how to address the institutional dimensions of the harm perpetrated, and to what extent law can lay claim to being a re-constitutive actor. Such occurrences of genocide are regularly considered as an event that is disconnected from the particular character of the society in which it occurs. But it is with reference to their distinct cultural, political and legal contexts that, Jennifer Balint maintains, genocide must be approached. It is not, she argues, new institutions that are needed; but a new approach to addressing genocide and state crime -- one that takes into consideration its broader social, historical and institutional dimensions. Only then is it possible to understand the limits and the potential of post-conflict political-legalprocesses. An important, and indeed vital, contribution to the growing interest and literature in the area of post-conflict studies, Genocide, State Crime, and the Law will be of considerable value to those concerned with law's ability to be a force for good in the wake of harm and atrocity.

Spis treści

1. Conceptualising Genocide and State Crime  2. The Toleration of Harm: Law and Perpetration  3. Cutting off the Old, Envisaging the New: Law and Redress  4. Accountability and Responsibility: Addressing Institutions  5. Bringing us all Together: Law and Reconciliation  6. Law and the Constitution of State Crime and Genocide

O autorze

Jennifer Balint is Lecturer in Socio-Legal Studies at the School of Social and Political Sciences, the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests lie primarily in the area of access to justice and the constitutive role of law, with a focus on genocide and other forms of state crime.