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CRIMINAL JUSTICE

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Posts tagged democracy
Personalizing the State: An Anthropology of Law, Politics, and Welfare in Austerity Britain

By Insa Lee Koch

Liberal democracy appears in crisis. From the rise of ‘law and order’ and ever tougher forms of means-testing under ‘austerity politics’ to the outcome of Britain’s referendum on leaving the EU, commentators have argued over why democracy has taken an illiberal turn. This book shifts the focus from the ‘why’ to the ‘how’ and the ‘what’: to how citizens experience government in the first place and what democracy means to them. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, it takes these questions to Britain's socially abandoned council estates, once built by local authorities to house the working classes. From the perspective of these citizens, punitive shifts in welfare, housing, and policing are part of a much longer history of classed state control that has acted on their homes and neighborhoods. But this is only half of the story. Citizens also pursue their understandings of grassroots politics and care that at times align with, but at others diverge from official policies. The anthropology of state-citizen relations challenges narratives of exceptionalism that have portrayed the people as a threat to the democratic order. It also reveals the murky, sometimes contradictory desires for a personalized state that cannot easily be collapsed with popular support for authoritarian interventions. Above all, this book exposes the liberal state’s disavowal of its political and moral responsibilities at a time when mechanisms for voicing working-class citizens’ demands have been silenced.

Oxford, UK; New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. 289p.

Justice, Democracy and the Right to Justification: Rainer Forst in Dialogue

By Rainer Forst

Over the past 15 years, Rainer Forst has developed a fundamental research programme within the tradition of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The core of this programme is a moral account of the basic right of justification that humans owe to one another as rational beings. This account is put to work by Forst in articulating - both historically and philosophically - the contexts and form of justice and of toleration. The result is a powerful theoretical framework within which to address issues such as transnational justice and multicultural toleration. In this volume, Forst sets out his ideas in an extended essay, which is responded to be influential interlocutors including: Andrea Sangiovanni, Amy Allen, Kevin Olson, Anthony Laden, Eva Erman and Simon Caney. The volume concludes with Forst's response to his interlocutors.

London: Bloomsbury Academic,  2014.  249p.

Democracy in the Courts: Lay Participation in European Criminal Justice Systems

By Marijke Malsch

This work examines lay participation in the administration of justice and how it reflects certain democratic principles. An international comparative perspective is taken for exploring how lay people are involved in the trial of criminal cases in European countries and how this impacts on their perspectives of the national legal systems. Comparisons between countries are made regarding how and to what extent lay participation takes place. The relation between lay participation and the legal system's legitimacy is analyzed. The book presents the results of interviews with both professional judges and lay participants in a number of European countries regarding their views on the involvement of lay people in the legal system. The ways in which judges and lay people interact while trying cases are explored. The characteristics of both professional and lay judging of cases are examined.

London; New York: Routledge, 2009. 248p.