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"In bringing together accomplished and thoughtful scholars of different disciplines, with a command of literature ranging from the legal to the literary, and in relating the works to the central arguments of the late Professor Robert Cover, Sarat and Kearns have created a first-rate up-to-date exposition of this important and complicated issue, namely, how to understand better the violence implicit and explicit in law."--Legal Studies Forum The relationship between law and violence is made familiar to us in vivid pictures of police beating suspects, the large and growing prison population, and the tenacious attachment to capital punishment in the United States. Yet the link between law and violence and the ways that law manages to impose pain and death while remaining aloof and unstained are an unexplored mystery. Each essay in this volume considers the question of how violence done by and in the name of the law differs from illegal or extralegal violence--or, indeed, if they differ at all. Each author draws on a distinctive disciplinary tradition-- literature, history, anthropology, philosophy, political science, or law. Yet each reminds us that law, constituted in response to the metaphorical violence of the state of nature, is itself a doer of literal violence. Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science and Chair of the Program in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, Amherst College. Thomas R. Kearns is William H. Hastie Professor of Philosophy, Amherst College.
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Law's Violence The Amherst Series in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought Each work included in The Amherst Series in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought explores a theme crucial to an understanding of law as it confronts the changing social and intellectual currents of the late twentieth century. The Fate of Law, edited by Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns Law's Violence, edited by Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns Law in Everyday Life, edited by Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns The Rhetoric of Law, edited by Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns Law's Violence Edited by Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Keams Ann Arbor THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS First paperback edition 1995 Copyright © by the University of Michigan 1993 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America 1998 1997 1996 1995 432 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Law's violence / edited by Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns. p. cm.-(Amherst series in law, jurisprudence, and social thought) Includes bibliogr.aphical references and index. ISBN 0-472-10390-3 (alk. paper). - ISBN 0-472-08317-1 (pbk.: alk. paper). 1. Law-Philosophy. 2. Violence (Law) 3. Violence. 1. Sarat, Austin. II. Kearns, Thomas R. III. Series. K235·L4 1992 340' .1-dc20 92-30306 CIP A elP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN13 978-0-472-10390-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN13 978-0-472-08317-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN13 978-0-472-02378-3 (electronic) Acknowledgments Writing and editing a book on Laws Violence has been part of an imagined conversation with Robert Cover, whose presence pervades our work and whose tragic absence is deeply felt. The subject of violence and its place in law and legal theory is at the center of the concerns of the Program in Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College. For their invaluable contributions to that program and their help in exploring the violence in and around law, we are grateful to our colleagues Lawrence Douglas and Victoria Saker. We have been greatly stimulated by the enthusiasm and interest of our students, and we acknowledge the help w.. ; have rece