Negotiating Identity: The Courtroom and the Archives

Abstract

Contemporary consumers of modern media are perhaps more sensitive than ever to the complex motivations, possibilities, and problems of legal testimony. In an era of televised trials and hearings, reprinted testimony, and highly publicized discussions of cases—from the trials of war criminals to the confirmation hearings of U.S. Supreme Court justices—the vulnerability and power of the witness, the nature and workings of legal narratives, and the dynamics of the courtroom have been exposed to observation and analysis as never before. This greater awareness of the peril and promise of legal testimony comes at a time when historians, too, have become better readers of court records. Thanks to in-fluences as diverse as literary theory, ethnographic analysis, and feminism, historians—Natalie Davis, Lyndal Roper, and Sarah Maza, among a host of others— are achieving richer and more sophisticated readings of court records which have long formed a staple of social history.