Intersections of Law and Memory

by: Miroslaw Michal Sadowski (Author)
Edition: 1st

Publication Date: March 12, 2024

Language: English

Print Length: 326 pages

ISBN-10: 1032610166

ISBN-13: 9781032610160

Book Description

This book elaborates a new framework for considering and understanding the relationship between law and memory.How can law influence collective memory? What are the mechanisms law employs to influence social perceptions of the past? And how successful is law in its attempts to rewrite narratives about the past? As the field of memory studies has grown, this book takes a step back from established transitional justice narratives, retuing to the core sociological, philosophical and legal theoretical issues that underpin this field. The book then goes on to propose a new approach to the relationship between law and collective memory based on a conception of ‘legal institutions of memory’. It then elaborates the functioning of such institutions through a range of examples – taken from Japan, Iraq, Brazil, Portugal, Rwanda and Poland – that move from the work of inteational tribunals and truth commissions to more explicit memory legislation. The book concludes with a general assessment of the contemporary intersections of law and memory, and their legal institutionalisation.This book will be of interest to scholars with relevant interests in the sociology of law, legal theory and inteational law, as well as in sociology and politics.
This book elaborates a new framework for considering and understanding the relationship between law and memory.How can law influence collective memory? What are the mechanisms law employs to influence social perceptions of the past? And how successful is law in its attempts to rewrite narratives about the past? As the field of memory studies has grown, this book takes a step back from established transitional justice narratives, retuing to the core sociological, philosophical and legal theoretical issues that underpin this field. The book then goes on to propose a new approach to the relationship between law and collective memory based on a conception of ‘legal institutions of memory’. It then elaborates the functioning of such institutions through a range of examples – taken from Japan, Iraq, Brazil, Portugal, Rwanda and Poland – that move from the work of inteational tribunals and truth commissions to more explicit memory legislation. The book concludes with a general assessment of the contemporary intersections of law and memory, and their legal institutionalisation.This book will be of interest to scholars with relevant interests in the sociology of law, legal theory and inteational law, as well as in sociology and politics. Read more