Contention in the Courtroom: The Legal Dimension of the 1960s Protests in the German and US Student Movements

Abstract

The images of campus protests and street battles of 1968 are deeply ingrained in public memory and have been the subject of many academic writings. However, the courtroom as a site of protest has been neglected as a serious field of inquiry. By comparing the ‘Chicago 8’ trial of 1969 in the USA with the proceedings against the members of the West German Kommune 1 of 1967, this article not only demonstrates the importance of the legal process as part of a wider movement strategy, but it also reveals striking similarities between the two cases – in the defendants’ protest strategies, and in the repertoires of ‘social control’ by the legal authorities. In spite of the different legal systems in which the trials took place – and without any transnational exchanges of legal strategies between participants – the dynamics of contention were almost identical in both countries. When asking how contention happens, evolves, and escalates, it seems that similar goals and strategies of the contending parties and the interaction between them mattered much more than the structural or institutional differences between the two legal systems. This interaction determined the very nature of the trials and established their central role in the history of the era.