Man's Justice Research Articles

God's Tribunal: Guilt, Innocence, and Execution in England, 1675–1775

This paper explores the ways in which the early modern English execution functioned as a forum in which various, and often competing, notions of guilt and innocence were expressed. In the context of a culture which placed an inordinate emphasis on the significance of the behaviour and last dying words of men and women teetering on the brink of ‘Judgement and Eternity’, the gallows became, in essence, ‘God's tribunal – the site where solemn oaths and supernatural signs could trump the rulings of secular courts. And it was here that the condemned could proclaim not merely his or her individual innocence of a specific crime, but raise larger questions of relative societal guilt and sinfulness and social justice by invoking the disparity between man's justice and God's.

Beyond white man's justice

This article proposes three principles which justice should incorporate if it is to move beyond the closures and exclusions of white man's justice. After a brief review of feminist and critical race theory literature that establishes the white, male character of justice in modern liberal societies, the principles of discursiveness, relationalism and reflectiveness are explained and discussed. Their implications for restorative justice are discussed. Oppression and inequality are suggested as concepts that can guide the operation, context and limits of discursiveness, relationalism and reflectiveness. In the final section, the problem of relativism against universalism is discussed, and its relevance to the development of restorative justice suggested.

Martin Heidegger, Heinrich Rickert: Briefwechsel 1912 bis 1933 und andere Dokumente by Alfred Denker (review)

840 Reviews Like other legal investigators of Kafka, Ferk is reluctant to concede that his con? cern with justice extends beyond law into ethics and theology. This narrow focus applies even to Ziolkowski's study, the best thing written so far on Kafka and the law. As Ferk concedes, Kafka represents the court's authority as inferior to that of Josef K.'s own conscience, and refers darkly to a higher judiciary, which Ferk aptly describes as 'eine jenseitige Richtgewalt' (p. 95). Kafka seems concerned less with hu? man justice than with the problems of divine justice, of theodicy. His portrayal of the bedridden, ineffectual, but tyrannical advocate Huld ('grace') seems to satirize those religious systems (especially Christianity) that interpose a mediator between oneself and the ultimate authority,whether the latter is God or one's conscience. One may also wonder whether Kafka held any 'Rechtsphilosophie', when his reflections on guilt, evidence, and justice are always bound to their fictional contexts. Nevertheless, Ferk has deployed an impressive knowledge both ofjurisprudence and of Kafka criticism to indicate both the possibilities and the limitations of a legal approach to Kafka's work. St John's College, Oxford Ritchie Robertson Martin Heidegger, Heinrich Rickert: Briefwechseligi2 bis 1933 und andere Dokumente. Ed. by Alfred Denker. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann. 2002. 156 pp. ?24. ISBN 3-465-03148-2 (pbk). This carefully edited volume contains the entire preserved correspondence between Heidegger and Rickert (one of Rickert's letters to Heidegger and two of Heidegger's are to be considered for ever lost). A significant part of the exchanges between the two men reflects their inequality in age and rank. Their status-conscious student-professor relationship was to sur? vive into the 1920s, and even after the overall change of tone, following Heidegger's intellectual coming of age, the former pupil would never venture beyond the safely respectful 'HochverehrterHerr Geheimrat'. Ofthe forty-threeletters published here, thirty-one were written by Heidegger and only twelve by Rickert; what is more, al? though Heidegger made the firstapproach in December 1912 (excusing himself for missing Rickert's seminars because of ill health), his letters remained unanswered until 1916. Indeed, the correspondence only took offafter Heidegger's habilitation and Rickert's move from Freiburg to Heidelberg. Only then did Rickert begin to see in Heidegger a colleague worth the effortof maintaining a correspondence; but even then Rickert remained restrained and, at times, condescending. The critical point came in 1929 when a stenogram of the Davos dispute between Cassirer and Heideg? ger was circulated (apparently without Heidegger's authorization), in which Rickert figured as just one of several neo-Kantians who, allegedly, strove to think through the domain of science rather than Being itself (letter no. 34, p. 61). The stenogram left Rickert wounded in his pride and perhaps somewhat anxious about having to catch up with the new philosophical agenda being set by Heidegger; the relationship survived thanks to the tact of both parties, and exchanges continued until Heidegger's election to the rectorship of Freiburg University, on which he was congratulated by Rickert in his last letter of 29 May 1933 (Rickert died in 1936). What other new information does this volume make available to Heidegger scho? lars? To start with, Heidegger's letter of 3 November 1914 (no. 8) sheds new light on the chronology of his life during the war. He mentions there that in August 1914 he 'volunteeredonce again' as an army recruit, but had to be discharged 'a week ago' due to his valvular defect. In his commentaries, Denker says that Heidegger presented himself as a volunteer on 2 August and was dismissed on 14 October (p. 112). Hugo Ott and Riidiger Safranski in their biographies of Heidegger do not mention this MLR, 99.3, 2004 841 earlier episode in Heidegger's war life; according to them, he was called to service only on 10 October, being thendeferred a few days later. The letter,as well as Denker's commentaries, can thus be judged to be of significance forHeidegger's future biogra? phers. It remains unclear, though, why on 3 November 1914 Heidegger should write that he was dismissed 'a week ago', ifthe date ofthe...

One Man's Justice

One Man's Justice

Michael Lobban, White Man's Justice: South African Political Trials in the Black Consciousness Era, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. ix + 288. Price $65.00 (ISBN 0–19–825809–7).

Michael Lobban, White Man's Justice: South African Political Trials in the Black Consciousness Era, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. ix + 288. Price $65.00 (ISBN 0–19–825809–7). - Volume 18 Issue 2

The Difference Law Makes

Abel's account of the struggle against apartheid focuses on the double role of law in it - law as the sword of the oppressor and law as the shield for the oppressed. Similarly, in White Man's Justice: South African Political Trials in the Black Consciousness Era, Michael Lobban offers an account of the role law played in judicial characterisations of resistance to apartheid when the resisters had been brought to court charged with various crimes against the state. I argue that Lobban's conclusions are not supported by his own evidence and that Abel presents a convincing, though mostly implicit, case for challenging the separation thesis. I conclude with some remarks about the implications of these two studies for the general jurisprudential debate about the relationship between law and politics.

White Man's Justice: South African political trials in the black consciousness era

White Man's Justice: South African political trials in the black consciousness era

White Man's Justice: South African Political Trials in the Black Consciousness Era

The growth of black consciousness - BPC and SASO 1972-74 black consciousness on trial white students on trial from ideas to action - terrorism trials before Soweto 1976 - new dangers, new responses terrorism and torture breaking the structures - terrorism trials after Soweto black revolt on trial - sedition and the Soweto students.

May 1930: White Man's Justice for a Black Man's Crime

May 1930: White Man's Justice for a Black Man's Crime

From Dopefiend to Kenyatta's Last Hit: The Angry Black Crime Novels of Donald Goines

Donald Goines is the foremost example of a cultural phenomenon possible no earlier than the 1970s a successful author of mass market fiction written by and about Blacks. Unlike the mass market fiction of authors such as Samuel R. Delany and Frank Yerby, the majority of whose readers are white and are intended to be white, the books of Donald Goines are devoured by legions of Americans everywhere, from the inner city to American military bases abroad. Goines's books, all paperback originals, have never been out of print since their original publication; they have sold more than five million copies and have been on option to several movie studios and independents. They are recommended reading at some urban high schools. In 1974 Goines was so prolific that his publisher asked him to adopt a pseudonym, which he did, taking the name of a friend, Al C. Clark. Primarily through Goines, his Los Angeles-based publisher Holloway House has made a name for itself in mass market publishing and has even invented a new literary genre, the Black experience novel, of which Goines is termed the master. In spite of all this, Goines's books are largely unknown to white readers. Goines's sixteen books, all slice-of-ghetto-life crime novels with characters, have ostentatious, lurid, concrete titles such as Swamp Man, Street Players, Death List and White Man's Justice, Man's Grief. The characters, and very often the protagonists, are whores, pimps, thieves, pushers, card sharps, gangsters, bootleggers, numbers operators, hit men and dope addicts. With the exception of Swamp Man, the books are all set in the inner city ghettos of Goines's home city Detroit, or Watts, Harlem, or the Southwest. Goines himself loved the ghetto street life and pursued most of these professions and activities at one time or another until his murder on October 21, 1974, and so was well qualified to write authoritatively about them. In his short 37-year life Goines was addicted to heroin off