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.
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.
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 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.
