Figure of the Witness in International Criminal Tribunals - Memory, Atrocities and Transitional Justice

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

List of contents

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

1. The symbolic representation of Nuremberg and Human Rights


2. 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


1. 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


1. Bearing Witness


• The Grey Zone: Law, Ethics and Legal Witnesses


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


1. Theoretical lens: conceptualising legal witnessing


• Memory: Individual and Collective Components


1. 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



1. The legal production of knowledge


2. 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


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


• The Right to Truth: Who's Speaking?


1. Mass Atrocities and the Right to Truth


2. Victims-Witnesses


3. 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


1. The ICTR and the crime of Genocide


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


• Beyond Law: The Plurality of Violent Memories


1. Discursive restrictions of witness memories


2. The 'Grey Zone' of legal witnessing


3. The plurality of memory


• Conclusion
Chapter Five: Critiquing Liberal Legality and Collective Memory



• Introduction


• Legal Actors as Memory Producers


1. Testifying in the 'Interests of Justice'


2. The discursive practices of Disclosure


3. Producing a Legal Memory of Rape and Sexual Violence


• Liberal Legality and Collective Memory: A Critique


1. A critique of advocacy for a legal collective memory of atrocities


2. Plural vs Collective memory


3. A Conceptual Alternative


• Conclusion
Chapter Six: Fragments of Legal Memories



• Introduction


• Legal Archives: Plurality, Self and 'Others'


1. Plural Fragments of Memory


2. 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




About the author










Benjamin Thorne is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Kent, and he completed his ESRC funded PhD in Law at the University of Sussex in 2020. Benjamin is an interdisciplinary scholar with main themes of interest within socio-legal studies, transitional justice, and critical theory. One area of focus for him is the connections between memory, transitional justice, and legal atrocity archives. More generally, Benjamin is interested in questions around visuals, sounds, as well as the broader sensory field, in how people experience crime, law and justice, particular in the international context. Currently, Benjamin is conducting collaborative research exploring the role visuals arts can have as a form of justice for victims of sexual violence committed during conflict. Furthermore, he is working on research through artistic expression exploring themes of memory, human senses and legal archive material and which has been published with the Law and Humanities Journal (2021). Previously, Benjamin was a Visiting Researcher at University of Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies.




Summary

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

Product details

• Authors: Benjamin Thorne
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 27.05.2024
• EAN: 9781032059884
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3205988-4
• No. of pages: 200
• Series: Transitional Justice
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Law > International law, foreign law; LAW / Criminal Law / General, Criminal law & procedure, Criminal law: procedure and offences