Political Trials

The rule of law is a widely used term in scholarship on Ottoman legal
reforms. Nevertheless, the actual meaning of this notion is rarely
clarifed in the writing on the late Ottoman Empire although theorists
of law have discussed the ambiguity of this term. This article aims at
examining the value of the rule of law as an analytical category when
discussing socio-legal change in the late Ottoman Empire. The article
demonstrates that the rule of law can be a meaningful category for
historical analysis when conceived through a ‘cultural perspective’ to
the law.

This paper aims to critically analyse the testimonies concerning Athenian impiety trials of the classical period. First, it reaffirms the arguments that some of them must have been an invention of Hellenistic and later authors. Second, it presents a likely political background behind the historical cases. Third, it discusses a number of legal issues, along with new arguments concerning the procedures employed. Finally, it examines some less well-known material from the fourth century BCE. Overall, it seeks to provide a possibly coherent and comprehensive framework of Athenian impiety trials based on their shared characteristics.

Spunti per una rilettura del caso Saisset, con il quale si aprí il "grand différend" tra Filippo il Bello e Bonifacio VIII nel 1301, cioè un momento chiave per lo sviluppo della Chiesa gallicana. L'analisi dei testi scritti nell'entourage regio (specie dal Nogaret) all'occasione del caso mette in luce gli inizi di un fenomeno di "pontificalizzazione" della monarchia capetingia, il quale si sarebbe accentuato negli anni 1302-1314 con le accuse rivolte a Bonifacio VIII e con il processo ai templari.

The phrase ‘deep state’ in Turkish popular parlance refers to powers operating with impunity through and beyond the official state structure. Recently, a number of criminal trials brought the deep state into Turkey’s courtrooms. My focus in this chapter is on the most famous of these, the so-called Ergenekon trial. I offer a reading of the Ergenekon case file as comprising an archive of the Turkish deep state, not because it successfully captures its history and facticity, but rather because it allows insight into the rationalities and passionate investments that culminate in the reification of the deep state. Two concerns guide my inquiry here: the problem of producing knowledge about the deep state, and the performative production of the state in trials involving state crimes. These two issues are inevitably related, since ways of knowing the political are intimately tied to ways of reifying it (Abrams 1988). In Pierre Bourdieu’s words, the state ‘thinks itself through those who attempt to think it’ (1994, p. 1). The case file in the Ergenekon trial has its own way of conjuring the state, in a bizarre amalgam of fact, fiction, fantasy, desire and disavowal – an amalgam best understood, I argue, in terms of the conspiratorial imagination. I conclude the chapter with a consideration of a way of knowing the deep state beyond the limits of legal and conspiratorial imagination, an articulation that mobilises the legal archive for a counter-conspiracy against the conspiring case files.

Photographic and videographic images play an important role in political trials that aim at public audiences. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, this article argues that one needs to focus on the affective dimension of images in order to understand the performative power these images hold in court. Because of their status as objects rather than subjects, images of atrocities are likely to affect audiences more profoundly when they have less emotional stakes of their own in the case.

What is the effect of revolutions on legal systems? What role do constitutions play in legitimating regimes? How do constitutions and revolutions converge or clash? Taking the Arab Spring as its case study, this book explores the role of law and constitutions during societal upheavals, and critically evaluates the different trajectories they could follow in a revolutionary setting. The book urges a rethinking of major categories in political, legal, and constitutional theory in light of the Arab Spring.

The book is a novel and comprehensive examination of the constitutional order that preceded and followed the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, Algeria, Oman, and Bahrain. It also provides the first thorough discussion of the trials of former regime officials in Egypt and Tunisia. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, including an in-depth analysis of recent court rulings in several Arab countries, the book illustrates the contradictory roles of law and constitutions. The book also contrasts the Arab Spring with other revolutionary situations and demonstrates how the Arab Spring provides a laboratory for examining scholarly ideas about revolutions, legitimacy, legality, continuity, popular sovereignty, and constituent power.

-- A comprehensive examination of the constitutional order that preceded and followed the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, Algeria, Oman, and Bahrain

-- Critically examines political, legal, and constitutional theory in light of the Arab Spring

-- Draws on comparative studies of the law and constitutions in diverse revolutionary contexts, covering examples from England, France, the United States, Russia, and Central and Eastern Europe

-- Facilitates access to a wide range of primary sources previously unavailable to anglophone readers, including court rulings in several Arab countries and the first thorough discussion of the trials and seizure of property of former regime officials in Egypt and Tunisia

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Law-Revolution-Legitimacy-Constitutionalism-Constitutional/dp/0198768893/ref=sr_1_1/261-5539174-4873819?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503250257&sr=1-1

OUP:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/law-and-revolution-9780198768890?lang=en&cc=fr

Sulla base di una ricerca condotta sull'archivio del Comitato bolognese di Solidarietà Democratica e sull'archivio della federazione locale del Pci, in questa breve relazione si presenta un quadro riassuntivo dell'attività di difesa legale, supporto economico-morale e pubblica svolta da Solidarietà Democratica (organizzazione del Fronte Democratico Popolare). L'arco cronologico considerato (1948-1961) è piuttosto ampio, seppur visto a volo d'uccello per la brevità richiesta. Inoltre, lo sguardo è concentrato sulla realtà cittadina e provinciale bolognese.
L'intervento si chiude con alcuni estratti documentari sul caso Fanin e sul gruppo comunista nel carcere di San Giovanni in Monte.

Through an exploration of the 1795 trial of Henry Redhead Yorke and drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's theory of symbolic power, this article examines the range of judicial strategies available to defendants during the political trials of radicals in Britain during the tumultuous 1790s, and the consequences of their choices in this context. It establishes that Yorke's unwillingness and/or inability to adhere to one specific mode of defense, in conjunction with his tendency to employ incompatible discursive and rhetorical components, help us better understand why he was convicted. The specific case study of Yorke's trial demonstrates the structured instability of the political and legal atmosphere in Britain during the 1790s, both in terms of the power relations between radicals and the establishment, and in terms of the radicals' own identity.

Arrestation du dirigeant Jacques Duclos à la suite des manifestations contre le général américain "Ridgway la peste", accusations de complot, répression militaire des "soldats du refus", affaire Audin, tuerie de Charonne. A l'heure de la guerre froide, des conflits indochinois et algérien, les militants communistes affrontent la mécanique répressive d'un État lancé dans la chasse aux "criminels politiques". Nourri d'archives inédites et de nombreux témoignages, le livre de Vanessa Codaccioni nous entraîne dans les coulisses politiques des poursuites judiciaires orchestrées contre les opposants. Elle montre comment les agents de l'Etat répriment leurs "populations cibles", mais aussi comment en retour, au sein du PCF, la répression est utilisée à des fins politiques et militantes. Mais comment devient-on le "héros" d'un groupe ou, à l'inverse, un "traître à la patrie" ? Qui faut-il être et quel crime faut-il avoir commis pour se retrouver au coeur d'une affaire d'atteinte à la sûreté de l'Etat ? En quoi le procès politique est-il l'une des manifestations les plus visibles de l'affrontement entre le pouvoir central et les ennemis du régime ? En portant l'analyse au coeur de ces relations conflictuelles, ce livre de sociologie historique renouvelle largement notre connaissance de la IVe République et des débuts de la Ve, et éclaire les rapports entre l'Etat et ses opposants en périodes de crise.

Political trials have been common in history, and have taken place in both consolidated democracies that respect the rule of law as well as authoritarian  regimes. As concentrated legal narratives and expressions of political activity, such trials are neither entirely pejorative nor positive. They are  microcosms of a specific political and cultural universe they seek to represent in concentrated legal form, and knowledge of context and the facts of each articular case are paramount. How then can such trials be analyzed and compared? The essay examines the current literature on political trials and argues against a single all-encompassing definition or typology in favour of a non-determinative list of criteria that illustrate how and under what conditions justice is politicized. Such a nuanced understanding of the range and type of factors that politicize trials is important because parallels between the Cold War and the current Global War on Terror indicate that such trials are not a feature of the remote past. Interpreting and applying the criteria suggested here would be helpful in order to recognize the processes of politicization, the didactic value of trials, particularly in situations of political transition.

The assassination of Panamanian President José Antonio Remón in 1955 and the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 brought about public trials of immense political importance. The article compares the ways legal processes in Panamá and Cuba were represented in the media, with particular focus on visual images. In both cases, images were key to the shifting of public sensibilities and understandings of the trials. But although in both Cuba and Panamá legal consciousness became highly politicized, in the former, the trials solidified public support for the young Revolution, whereas in Panamá, the notion of a corrupted legal process undermined the regime as a whole.

Resumen
El asesinato del presidente panameño José Antonio Remón en 1955 y el triunfo de la Revolución Cubana en 1959 provocaron juicios de gran importancia política. Este artículo compara las formas que esos procesos judiciales fueron representados en los medios de comunicación en Panamá y Cuba, con especial atención a las imágenes visuales. En ambos casos, imágenes fueron claves para efectuar cambios en la sensibilidad jurídica del público y su entendimiento del proceso político-judicial. Pero aunque en Cuba y Panamá la conciencia jurídica se politizó, los tribunales solidificaron el apoyo público a la joven Revolución Cubana, mientras que en Panamá la noción de un proceso legal corrupto socavó el régimen en su conjunto.

This article situates the history of the Russian Political Red Cross (the "Krest") in the context of the discourse of rights and humanitarianism in the early 20th century. During the period of its most vigorous activity, from 1918 to 1922, the lawyers and moderate socialists who made up its active core developed an ethos of "defending the rights of the individual" (zashchita prav lichnosti), especially against the encroachments of a menacing state.
The current essay traces the genealogy of this ethos from several overlapping and interrelated intelligentsia discourses - the legal discourse of individual rights; the sentimental discourse of outraged empathy; and the "red cross" discourse of humanitarian assistance. While it had no formal ties to the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) or to the official Russian (then Soviet) Red Cross society, Krest leaders (including Nikolai Murav'ev and Ekaterina Peshkova) laid claim to "red cross" traditions: just as the ICRC and the national Red Cross societies cared for those wounded on the battlefield, and later also prisoners of war, so the Krest looked after the victims of internal conflict, and in particular political prisoners.
The article further explores both how the Krest established direct connection with international activists, including the nascent International Committee for Political Prisoners, and how Soviet authorities despite derisively dismissing "bourgeois" rights, co-opted this discourse and, paradoxically, claimed to be the more authentic guarantor of the rights of the individual. In a dialectical process, this recommitment to the semblance of human rights was seized on by the emerging dissident human rights movement of the 1960s, which insisted on holding the Soviet Union to its own written laws, just as Political Red Cross advocates had strived to do half a century before.

How does criminal responsibility for state violence matter? This paper shows that in the interplay between courts, the President and Congress in Argentina in the 1980s, definitions of responsibility were understood as mechanisms for regulating trials. At the same time, ascriptions and performances of responsibility, obedience, and disobedience took on lives of their own as the officers who were interpellated as having been responsible in the past tried to work on crafting stories, responses, and public identities in response to the trials.

Procès politiques en Italie pendant les années de plomb : le cas de la poursuite judiciaire contre le mouvement « Autonomia Operaia » Résumé : Vers la fin des années 1970, dans le contexte de l'urgence liée à la lutte contre la violence politique et le terrorisme, un type de procès judiciaire assez inédit se déroule en Italie contre le mouvement « extra-institutionnel » « Autonomia Operaia ». Ce procès pénal, mieux connu sous le nom de procès 7 aprile, représente l'aboutissement d'une longue gestation durant laquelle certaines pratiques judiciaires spéciales se précisent. Elles sont d'abord utilisées pour contrecarrer la violence politique des mouvements extra institutionnels, puis employées dans la poursuite de certains groupes d'individus considérés comme les responsables de tout le mouvement subversif des années 1970. C'est tout au long de la durée presque décennale du procès 7 aprile que se cristallisent certains traits innovateurs du procès pénal en Italie, traits qui allaient être systématisés pour déterminer une véritable innovation du paradigme judiciaire pendant les phases de crise ou d'urgence. Mots-clés : procès politiques – terrorisme – pouvoir judiciaire – Italie Abstract : In the late 70s, an unprecedented trial took place against a backdrop of terrorism and political violence: the prosecution of the extra-institutional movement " Autonomia Operaia ". This case, better known as the trial of " 7th April " , marked the culmination of a long gestation period shaping special judicial practices. These were first used to counter political violence of extra institutional movements, then in order to prosecute some groups of people considered to be the leaders of 1970's subversive movement. The criminal case lasted 10 years and paved the way for some innovative features within the Italian Criminal Justice that would achieve thereafter a true innovation of the Justice System during crisis or emergency.

When six young latinos were arrested in the Mission District of San Francisco and charged with murdering a police officer, a community movement immediately began to form to defend them. Several had been activists in Third World Studies programs at local colleges. Strictly Ghetto Property tells the story of the highly charged trial, the "Los Siete" movement, and the political and social challenges faced by immigrant families.

In this translation, we present fragments from Artur Klinau’s latest book Eight Days of Revolution: A Documentary Journal from Minsk, commemorating the beginnings of the Belarusian Revolution. In it, he recounts the arrest of his daughter, filmmaker Daria Marta Klinava, on August 8, 2020. Zurkampf Verlag is scheduled to publish the German translation of this book later in 2021.

Original publication: https://alchemy.ucsd.edu/8-days/

Among the censored press and criminal prosecutions led against individuals after the 1968 student demonstrations in socialist Yugoslavia, a Hungarian neo-avantgarde journal published in Novi Sad found its own place. The "Új Symposion" journal's two issues were banned at the end of 1971, and a few months later, its two authors and editor were criminally prosecuted. The aim of this article is to explore the occurrence of political trials in Yugoslavia on the example of the "Új Symposion" case, by looking into the trial documents, as well as the testimonies of three witnesses of this historical event.