Crime, Justice, and Anglo-American Comics

Author(s):  
Thomas Giddens

Criminal justice is a perennial theme in modern comics published in the United States and United Kingdom, with dominant narratives revolving around the protection of the innocent from crime and harm or the seeking of justice outside the authority of the state. The history of the comics medium and its regulation in the mid-20th century, particularly in the United States, shows how the comics medium itself—not just its popular content—was embroiled in questions of criminality, in relation to its perceived obscenity and fears that it caused juvenile delinquency. Indeed, the medium’s regulation shaped the way it has been able to engage with questions of crime and justice; the limitations on moral complexity under the censorship of the 1954 Comics Code in the United States, for example, arguably led to both a dearth of critical engagement in crime and justice concerns, and an increased evil or psychopathy in criminal characters (because more nuanced motivations could not be depicted under the Code). From the 1980s onwards, the restrictions of the Code abated, and a broad “maturation” of the form can be seen, with a concurrent increase in critical engagement with criminological questions. The main themes of comics research around crime and comics after the 1980s include questions of vigilantism and retribution, seen as the dominant concern in mainstream comics. But other leading questions go beyond these issues and explore comics’ engagement with the politics of crime and justice, highlighting the medium’s capacity to question the nature of justice and the legitimate exercise of state power. Moreover, stepping back and considering the general relationship between comics and criminology, comics can be seen as important cultural forms of expression of moral and social values, as well as potentially alternative orders of knowledge that can challenge mainstream criminology. From free speech, juvenile delinquency, and vigilantism, to politics, culture, and disciplinary knowledge, there are significant interactions between comics and criminology on a variety of levels.

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 297-302
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Berger

The three articles offered in this forum on the early history of criminal appeals do us the great service of adding much of interest on this important but neglected issue in the development of Anglo–North American criminal procedure. The opaqueness of the legal history of criminal appeals stands in stark contrast to their centrality and apparent naturalness in contemporary criminal justice systems in England, Canada, and the United States. These three papers look at the period leading up to and immediately following the creation of the first formalized system of what we might call criminal appeals, the establishment of the Court of Crown Cases Reserved (CCCR) in 1848. This key period in the development of the adversary criminal trial was marked by both a concerted political effort to codify and rationalize the criminal law and by profound structural changes in the management of criminal justice.


2021 ◽  
pp. 34-49
Author(s):  
Bartosz Kułan

The article presents the history of the children’s republic founded by William Ruben George (1866–1936). The first part of the article focuses on familiarising readers with the figure of William Ruben George – the founder of the George Junior Republic. This figure and his activities have not been known in the Polish scientific discourse so far. The following sections discuss the general characteristics of the fight against juvenile delinquency in the United States and the reasons for the creation of the George Junior Republic. The next part focuses on the governance system in the George Junior Republic and the daily lives of the pupils.


AmeriQuests ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Percy DeWitt

David M. O’Brien’s Congress Shall Make No Law: The First Amendment, Unprotected Expression, and the Supreme Court serves as a significant contribution to the field of First Amendment Law by offering an overview of crucial issues and, moreover, by emphasizing the outlook for the future of free speech. O’Brien’s credentials position him favorably for the task; he was a judicial fellow and research associate with the Supreme Court, he has written numerous articles and books on the Supreme Court, and he is currently the Leone Reaves and George W. Spicer Professor of Law at the University of Virginia. Considering the daunting task of compiling a succinct account and analysis of the history of free speech in the United States, Professor O’Brien does well to allow readers to better understand the complexities of free speech policy in the United States.


Author(s):  
Duncan Bell

This chapter sketches a synoptic intellectual history of the attempt to unify the constituent elements of the “Anglo-world” into a single globe-spanning community, and to harness its purported world-historical potential as an agent of order and justice. Since the late nineteenth century numerous commentators have preached the benefits of unity, though they have often disagreed on the institutional form it should assume. These are projects for the creation of a new Anglo century. The first two sections of the chapter explore overlapping elements of the fin de siècle Anglo-world discourse. The third section traces the echoes of debates over the future relationship between the empire and the United States through the twentieth century, discussing the interlacing articulation of imperial-commonwealth, Anglo-American, democratic unionist, and world federalist projects. The final section discusses contemporary accounts of Anglo-world supremacy.


Author(s):  
Stephen Bowman

The introduction provides a grounding in the diplomatic history of Anglo-American relations and surveys the main events of the so-called ‘Great Rapprochement’ between the two countries, including the Alaskan Boundary Dispute, Britain’s response to the Spanish-American War in 1898, and the US’s subsequent attitude to Britain’s war with the Boers. The introduction analyses the concept of ‘Anglo-Saxonism’ and discusses the ways in which it was important both to the Pilgrims Society and to official Anglo-American relations. The introduction also provides a chapter by chapter breakdown of the rest of the book and outlines the argument that while the Pilgrims never set the agenda for official Anglo-American relations it nevertheless played a leading role in public diplomacy and, by extension, in how people have thought about how Britain and the United States have related to each other.


Author(s):  
Randolph Roth

This chapter contends that American exceptionalism is a far more complex issue than it initially appears. Which nations are exceptional? When, and in what ways? Once the question of exceptionalism is asked over a long span of time, its answer is almost always fluid and complicated. Hence, the chapter turns to comparative historical research in isolating the most important causes of incidents like homicide and punitive penal policies, by showing that those causes recur again and again in the presence of certain phenomena. It asserts that history shows that the relationship between crime and punitiveness is far from simple.


Author(s):  
Michael J. Pfeifer

This introductory chapter discusses the gaps in current American lynching historiography, noting that, while several recent studies of lynching have enhanced our understanding of the history of the rhetoric surrounding the term lynching, they have only peripherally addressed the very real practices of collective violence that the word actually connoted in particular times and places. In addition, the chapter provides a brief overview of American lynching, which arose in the early to mid-nineteenth century as a response to alterations in law and social values (the shift from a penology of retribution and deterrence to one centered on reform of the criminal, the rise of the adversarial system and aggressive defense lawyering, the shift from private to public criminal prosecution, and the professionalization of criminal justice) that occurred throughout the Anglo-American world.


Author(s):  
Amanda L. Tyler

The Introduction provides an overview of the history of the writ of habeas corpus and an overview of the book, which tells the story of what is sometimes known as “the Great Writ” as it has unfolded in Anglo-American law. The primary jurisdictions explored are Great Britain and the United States, yet many aspects of this story will ring familiar to those in other countries with a robust habeas tradition. The book chronicles the longstanding role of the common law writ of habeas corpus as a vehicle for reviewing detentions for conformity with underlying law, as well as the profound influence of the English Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 on Anglo-American law. The Introduction highlights how the writ has at times failed to live up to its glorification by Blackstone and others, while noting that at other times it has proven invaluable to protection of liberty, including as a vehicle for freeing slaves and persons confined solely based on a King’s whim.


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