'Lawfare' describes the systematic use and abuse of legal procedure for political ends. This provocative book examines this insufficiently understood form of warfare in post-genocide Rwanda, where it contributed to the making of dictatorship. Jens Meierhenrich provides a redescription of Rwanda's daring experiment in transitional justice known as inkiko gacaca. By dissecting the temporally and structurally embedded mechanisms and processes by which change agents in post-genocide Rwanda manoeuvred to create modified legal arrangements of things past, Meierhenrich reveals an unexpected jurisprudence of violence. Combining nomothetic and ideographic reasoning, he shows that the deformation of the gacaca courts – and thus the rise of lawfare in post-genocide Rwanda – was not preordained but the outcome of a violently structured contingency. The Violence of Law tells a disturbing tale and will appeal to scholars, advanced students, and practitioners of international and comparative law, African studies and human rights.
- Subverts conventional wisdom about the case of post-genocide Rwanda by illuminating the dark sides of transitional justice with a longitudinal study of a frequently misunderstood case
- Sheds light on 'lawfare' – a disturbing phenomenon of global concern
- Traces and historicizes practices of lawfare through visual ethnography and other forms of interpretive inquiry in order to advance the longstanding, fragmented debate over the violence of law in the social sciences and humanities
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Reviews & endorsements
'Law is violence, not always (let alone necessarily) an alternative to it, Jens Meierhenrich brilliantly documents in this long-awaited masterpiece, in the process entirely overturning congratulatory, melodramatic, and orientalist depictions of local 'justice.' A genuinely monumental work, in insight as well as in scope.' Samuel Moyn, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History, Yale Law School
'Deeply informed theoretically, and truly interdisciplinary, The Violence of Law builds upon a granular account of Rwanda's post-genocide experience, including a detailed ethnography of its widely noted gacaca courts, to develop an important argument of how legalism and 'lawfare,' consent and coercion, are simultaneously constructed and entangled in support of governmentality. The book deserves close attention from everyone interested in legal theory.' Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law Emeritus, Harvard Law School
'The Violence of Law is a first-rate critique of transitional justice as injustice. It reveals a jurisprudence of violence unexpected by those who misunderstand rule-of-law promotion as an inherently good practice.' Laura Nader, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
'Meierhenrich pulls back the veil of ignorance to show the violence embedded in the law. Meticulously and exhaustively researched and expertly analyzed, The Violence of Law is a magisterial accomplishment. Its findings go beyond the gacaca courts to question the entire transitional justice enterprise.' Michael Barnett, University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science, George Washington University
Weaving together on-the-ground observations, political theories, photographic evidence, and historical narratives, The Violence of Law exposes how brutal effects of power can be accompanied by a narrative of victimhood, mobilizing international sympathy.' Martha Minow, 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard Law School
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Product details
- Date Published: May 2024
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781108425391
- length: 770 pages
- dimensions: 235 x 160 x 48 mm
- weight: 1.253kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Part I. Introduction:
1. A justice façade
Part II. A Theoretical Framework:
2. The violence of law
Part III. The Emergence of Lawfare:
3. Bending the law
4. Chambres specialisées: from legalism to lawfare
Part IV. The Evolution of Lawfare:
5. Varieties of Gacaca
or: the invention of tradition
6. Violent legalization
7. Lineages of governmentality
8. The supply and demand of law
9. The marketing of genocide
Part V. The Effects of Lawfare:
10. In a field of pain and death: lawfare in the countryside
11. A cartography of silence
Part VI. Conclusion:
12. The political economy of lawfare.
Look Inside
Author
Jens Meierhenrich, London School of Economics
Jens Meierhenrich is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He has previously taught at Harvard University. His many books include The Legacies of Law (Cambridge, 2008), which won the American Political Science Association's 2009 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award, The Remnants of the Rechtsstaat (2018), and, as co-editor, The Cambridge Companion to the Rule of Law (Cambridge, 2022).