How can we explain the variations between judicial decisions in criminal matters? Using the method of natural experiment, economist Arnaud Philippe sets out to identify the factors that influence decisions and determine criminal sanctions. At the risk of forgetting sociology?
The growing number of legal cases concerning climate inaction marks another step in the fight to protect the environment. What are these cases? Who are the accused? Are their effects only symbolic?
Can the law be broken to maintain public order? This is the question addressed in a remarkable comparative work on vigilantism and ‘rough justice’ in the security era.
Reparation, Johann Michel explains, is not just a moral principle dictated by our sense of justice. More fundamentally, it is an anthropological constant, through which we try to mitigate our inherent vulnerability.
French law defines racism in terms of discourses, not actions. Based on an analysis of 731 crimes, R. Brahim shows how physical violence is compounded by psychological violence when the legislative and judicial system denies or downplays the racist nature of the crimes.
From the landmark Bobigny abortion trial to the Affaire du Siècle climate justice campaign, can the law serve as an effective political tool for social struggles? Countering the image of a fundamentally conservative law, the sociologist Liora Israël looks back at the strategic uses of the law by the French left after 1968.
As protests against racism break out all over the world following the murder of George Floyd, Books & Ideas gathers a selection of texts examining the history of these multifaceted discriminations and of the struggles for racial justice.
Urban soil endures ubiquitous and serious pollution from past industrial activities. This pollution is invisible and undifferentiated, which invites us to amend theories of environmental justice.
Climate change does not affect all of us equally. Developed countries are the largest contributors to global warming, but the main victims are the poorest and future generations. This raises a rarely addressed moral and political problem.
What justifies majority decision making in democracies? Can we consider that the majority is more likely to be right? Didier Mineur reflects on the philosophical foundations of a rule that has become so self-evident in our societies.
Despite what some people now imagine, the Middle Ages was no more inclined to torture than other periods. Through a study of the archives of the Paris Parlement, Faustine Harang demonstrates that the medieval judicial system used this practice in a way that was limited and—most importantly—highly controlled.
Is it rational to act justly? Contemporary moral philosophy would appear to think so, but there is room for doubt: reason often urges us to serve our own interests first and foremost, even if that means being unjust. And much more is therefore required to convince the wicked than the mere force of reason.
From a “minor event”, the execution of two traitors from the Aosta Valley in 1943, Sergio Luzzatto offers us an extensive depiction of the history and memory of the Resistance against a backdrop of Jew hunts, denunciations, and civil war.
In a recent book, Harvard Professor of Law Intisar Rabb focuses on what she terms the ‘doubt canon’ in Islamic law, which instructs jurists to avoid criminal punishments in cases of doubt. In rediscovering the centrality of this concept, Rabb shines a light on an aspect of Islamic law that is too often ignored today.
Ronald Dworkin’s innovative and politically ambitious work has become essential reading in political and legal theory. Taking issue with classical political liberalism, he argues that liberty and equality are not mutually exclusive, and are indeed inseparable. And against traditional interpretations of law, he argues that law must be understood by comparing it to a collective novel, a mixture of creativity and interpretation.
The trial of the Gang of Four, which included Mao Zedong’s wife, took place after the end of the Cultural Revolution, during the winter of 1980-81. In the West, it is usually seen as a show trial; in China it constitutes the founding act of defence, throwing light on the particular way in which contemporary Chinese lawyers focus on technique and impartiality.
Are human rights a cornerstone of democracy, or a threat to social ties? Are they a precondition for the existence of a public space, or a triumph of individualism? Political thinkers have debated these questions during the last three decades. In this essay, Justine Lacroix explains the issues and the current situation.
The Occupied Territories are largely absent from the Israeli public sphere. Few movie directors even bother to tell their story anymore. Documentary maker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz has risen to the challenge in a powerful work that uses cinematic techniques to denounce the worldview responsible for the institutionalized miscarriage of justice by the Israeli military administration “in these parts.”
The Icelandic crisis was far more than a typical banking crisis. Historian Ingimundarson sees it also as a transitional justice case with features of truth-telling and demands for government accountability, leading to the indictment of the former Prime Minister for crimes associated with the global financial crisis.
Far from being natural, the compatibility between the legal orders of the European Union and member states is the result of arrangements and decisions through which judges ensure the preeminence of European norms over national legislation and extend the rule of law over an ever-widening realm.
The evolution of international criminal justice since the 1990s has spurred both scholarly study and controversy. Against those who bluntly denounce “victors’ justice” to the point of paving the way for negationism, a recent book takes an empirical approach to the question of the reception of the work of international courts and the effects of their decisions on the populations involved.
Jacques Krynen shows, in an excellent overview, that judicial power was not a recent invention: in the Old Regime, high court judges already claimed a share of royal power. This erudite yet accessible book thus revises the myth of absolutism. What about other magistrates and lawyers?
For Amartya Sen, a consensus around rejecting injustice is preferable to a general theory of justice. Although his critique of the Rawlsian approach may be useful, his arguments for a comparative approach to justice are not completely persuasive.
Is it possible, after a conflict or genocide, to deliver justice and build a new political order acceptable to all sides previously set on destroying each other? Christian Nadeau looks at recent conflicts in Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia, among others, to lay down the foundations of a theory of transitional justice. In his view a successful transition to democracy has to be based on reparation and deliberation.
Jon Elster explains why he has gradually distanced himself from rational choice theories to favour chance and the luck of the draw, less liable to be unjust when deliberation is plainly impossible. Video interview.
Because of the absence of statistics known as “ethnic” in France, social scientists do not have at their disposal data on possible discriminations produced by criminal law judges. To compensate for this dearth, Fabien Jobard, researcher at the French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS), has examined decisions handed down by a court in the Paris area with respect to acts of insulting conduct, rebellion and violence against agents of the public authority. His study helps to place in much clearer perspective the commonplace by which judges are indifferent to skin colour in their judgments.
The international community places high hopes on the International Criminal Court. In punishing leaders responsible for mass atrocities, it is thought to stabilize the post-conflict society and reconcile the divided population. But the outcome often proves unsatisfactory, and criticism is growing, among local populations and international experts alike. According to Michael Th. Johnson, the ICC must assume a different role than it plays today: rather than “going in and coming out”, it should commit to a long-term effort or restoring the local justice sector’s capacity to judge the crimes itself.
