Mass Atrocity Collective Memory And The Law

Download or read book Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory, and the Law written by Mark Osiel and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1999-09-01 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To this end, writes Osiel, we should pay closer attention to the way an experience of administrative massacre is framed within the conventions of competing theatrical genres. Defense counsel will tell the story as a tragedy, while prosecutors will present it as a morality play. The judicial task at such moments is to employ the law to recast the courtroom drama in terms of a "theater of ideas," which engages large questions of collective memory and even national identity. Osiel asserts that principles of liberal morality can be most effectively inculcated in a society traumatized by fratricide when proceedings are conducted in this fashion.