Law Against Genocide: Cosmopolitan Trials

Author:   David Hirsh
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
ISBN:  

9781904385042


Pages:   208
Publication Date:   04 April 2003
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Law Against Genocide: Cosmopolitan Trials


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Overview

This is an innovative and timely sociological contribution to current concerns regarding critical cosmopolitanism,human rights and crimes against humanity. The book brings a sociologist's insight to legal institutions and narratives, while analyzing the development of the law of crimes against humanity since the Nuremburg trials and the issues of individual and collective responsibility. Discussion of the theoretical and political debates surrounding humanitarian law is anchored in the author's empirical analysis of four contemporary trials, two at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, the London trial of Andrei Sawoniuk in 1999 for crimes during the Holocaust, and the David Irving libel case. Drawing on a wide repertoire of arguments from classic and current sociology as well as theorists of international law, the author makes a case for seeing these trials as part of an emergent 'cosmopolitan' criminal law that puts the protection of people above the rights of states or governments. He takes on critics of cosmopolitan law who see it as either utopian or imperialistic. The book is also important in addressing law's role in defining collective memory, marking off what evidence is admissible and credible, and filtering the oral and written traces of the past. The book will appeal to students and scholars in social and political theory; the politics and sociology of globalization, social identities, racism and genocide; social memory and Holocaust studies; law and social theory/socio-legal studies and criminology; international law, international relations.

Full Product Details

Author:   David Hirsh
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge Cavendish
Dimensions:   Width: 15.60cm , Height: 1.10cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.340kg
ISBN:  

9781904385042


ISBN 10:   1904385044
Pages:   208
Publication Date:   04 April 2003
Audience:   College/higher education ,  General/trade ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Cosmopolitan Law; Chapter 2 Individual Responsibility and Cosmopolitan Law; Chapter 3 Crimes Against Humanity; Chapter 4 Peace, Security and Justice in the Former Yugoslavia; Chapter 5 The Trials of Blaskic and Tadic at the ICTY; Chapter 6 The Sawoniuk Trial; Chapter 7 Irving v Lipstadt and the Legal Construction of Authoritative Cosmopolitan Narrative; Chapter 8 Conclusion;

Reviews

'Law Against Genocide is both a synoptic and reflexive approach to genocide studies that exposes the complexities and limits of understanding a crime whose legacies are inassimilable to conventional legal and social scientific scholarship' Social and Legal Studies, Studies 13 (4) 2004 'Refreshingly, Hirsh does not evoke a misguided and misplaced optimism, but portrays such a law in its actuality as it develops and accommodates the demands for justice in a world beset by violence and cruelty. 'http://www.du.edu/gsis/hrhw/volumes/2004/weinert-2004.pdf 'Three recent books might be expected to shed light on these conundrums. David Hirsh, in Law Against Genocide: Cosmopolitan Trials, takes a likeably broad view of international criminal law or war crimes trials. His 'cosmopolitan trials' include not just classic war crimes in the Nuremberg mode (e.g. the ICTY hearings in The Hague) but also domestic trials (Sawoniuk in the UK) and civil cases (the Irving defamation proceedings). Hirsh concedes that these cases are considered on the serendipitous grounds that the author happened to be around at the time but, paradoxically, the result of this accidental scholarship is a comprehensive theory about what these cases are about or add up to (they are part of cosmopolitan law). Hirsh take the view that war crimes trial are cosmopolitan and didactic They are part of the transformation of international law and the decentering of the state but they also educate and enlighten (these various effects are not fully in evidence in every trial, of course).' International Journal of Law in Context, I,I pp. 101-113 (2005) 'A thoroughly argued, well-researched book...' European Journal of Social Thoery 8(1): 87 - 90


Author Information

David Hirsh currently lectures in Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London.

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