Law, Politics, and Violence: The Treason Trials Act of 1696

1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
James R. Phifer

In January, 1696, Parliament passed an act to reform the procedure used in treason trials. The consequences of this act were immense. It immediately changed the complexion of treason trials from that of conciliar hearings aimed at eliminating the government's enemies to that of actual trials which sought to establish guilt or innocence. Moreover, Parliament subsequently extended some of the key provisions of this act to criminal law proceedings, thus giving the 1696 statute a claim to being one of the well-springs of legal reform in modern England. Most important of all, however, was the effect the act had on politics. It helped to bring to a close an age in which politicians frequently attacked their opponents with charges of treason, and it thus played a part in opening a new age, one where less violent practices were employed in the political struggle.It is not the least of ironies in English history that an act as important as the Treason Trials Act of 1696 should have received so little scholarly attention. The only historian to give the act more than a few pages is Samuel Rezneck in an article written in 1930. Most historians who work on the period follow the practice of such scholars as G. M. Trevelyan, David Ogg, and Sir Keith Feiling, and either fail to mention the act or note its passage in a sentence or two. Many scholars, especially those of an earlier generation, seem to assume that the act was a natural, perhaps inevitable, reaction to Stuart tyranny—that it was part of the light brought in by William and Mary at the end of a dark century—and, hence, that there is little need to discuss it.

Author(s):  
Umberto Laffi

Abstract The Principle of the Irretroactivity of the Law in the Roman Legal Experience in the Republican Age. Through an in-depth analysis of literary and legal sources (primarily Cicero) and of epigraphic evidence, the author demonstrates that the principle of the law’s non-retroactivity was known to, and applied by, the Romans since the Republican age. The political struggle favored on several occasions the violation of this principle by imposing an extraordinary criminal legislation, aimed at sanctioning past behaviors of adversaries. But, although with undeniable limits of effectiveness in the dynamic relationship with the retroactivity, the author acknowledges that at the end of the first century BC non-retroactivity appeared as the dominant principle, consolidated both in the field of the civil law as well as substantive criminal law.


2019 ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
Andrzej Chmiel

This publication is an attempt to answer the question: what was the role of the criminal penalty, especially in its strictest form (summum supplicium) in the Roman legislation of Christian emperors? Finally, whether is it noticeable, based on the example of summum supplicium, that Christianity influenced the Roman criminal law in any way? As it has been demonstrated, the new state religion did not radically change the Roman criminal legislation. The legislation of the Christian emperors confirmed both, the division of society into servi and liberii that had existed for centuries in the Roman state and the diversity of the legal situation of individual social groups. Punishment in the legislation of Christian emperors continued to fulfil the role it had played in the previous centuries and became, even more than ever before, an essential tool for the political struggle of the present state authority. The finest example of this was the legislation of Constantine the Great, followed by all the severity of criminal repression which resulted in the issuing of this legal act. A great desire to bring about a new order, maintain power and even the fear of losing it can be detected in the strictness of the Constantine’s legislation. Finally, the once persecuted Christians began to behave like their previous persecutors.


Slavic Review ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-603 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Frankel

To map out a convincing genealogy of the Russian revolutionary Marxist movement (and, from 1903, of its Bolshevik wing) was always a concern of its leaders. Revolutionary Marxism made its Russian debut with Plekhanov's bookletSocialism and the Political Struggleonly in 1883, some thirty-five years after theCommunist Manifestoand almost sixty years after the Decembrist uprising. It was thus a latecomer both to European Marxism and to the Russian revolutionary movement. How was it to define its own relationship to these forerunners? To emphasize only the Marxist heritage meant to isolate the young movement from the formidable tradition of revolt already built up in Russia. But to identify the emergent Marxist movement too fully with this tradition would undermine its claim to be possessed of a new message, to be the prophet of a new age.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eko Wahyono ◽  
Rizka Amalia ◽  
Ikma Citra Ranteallo

This research further examines the video entitled “what is the truth about post-factual politics?” about the case in the United States related to Trump and in the UK related to Brexit. The phenomenon of Post truth/post factual also occurs in Indonesia as seen in the political struggle experienced by Ahok in the governor election (DKI Jakarta). Through Michel Foucault's approach to post truth with assertive logic, the mass media is constructed for the interested parties and ignores the real reality. The conclusion of this study indicates that new media was able to spread various discourses ranging from influencing the way of thoughts, behavior of society to the ideology adopted by a society.Keywords: Post factual, post truth, new media


Author(s):  
Georg Menz

The explosive rise in not just public, but also private debt has recently attracted more scholarly attention. This is a novel development and might expose politico-economic models of governance to instability from an angle previously underappreciated. The liberalization of credit access in the Anglo-American countries, and, somewhat later, beyond those, might be seen as liberating for some, but they also create the potential for entrapment in debt. The term ‘privatized Keynesianism’ has been proposed to suggest a systematic agenda behind the facilitated access to lending. In this chapter, the broader access to investment vehicles is also being scrutinized, although upon closer inspection any claims of mass ownership of shares turn out not to be tenable.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Roman M. Frolov

In his Bellum Ciuile, Caesar reports the events of 1 January 49 with these words (1.3.1): misso ad uesperum senatu omnes qui sunt eius ordinis a Pompeio euocantur. laudat <promptos> Pompeius atque in posterum confirmat, segniores castigat atque incitat. When the Senate had been dismissed towards dusk, all who belonged to that order were summoned by Pompeius. He praised the determined and encouraged them for the future while criticizing and stirring up those who were less eager to act. This meeting has not attracted much scholarly attention and admittedly for a good reason: other circumstances of the outbreak of the Civil War are, perhaps, more significant for understanding the events as well as the intentions and decisions of the political actors. The importance of this gathering lies, however, not so much in what its role might have been in the developments of the year 49 but rather in the context of the phenomenon of the promagistrates’ interference in the domestic politics of Late Republican Rome.


1979 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles T. Wood

Among the familiar sights crowding the landscape of English history from the dooms of Ine to that crown plucked from a hawthorn bush at Bosworth, none is more deeply cherished than the crisis of 1297 and the “Confirmation of the Charters” to which it gave rise. For, despite all the sharp differences over detail that the documentation for this crisis has engendered, scholars have shown remarkable agreement in seeing it as the one defeat suffered by Edward I in a long and notably successful reign. And to that defeat they have attributed great constitutional significance. Stubbs set the pattern, calling the “result singularly in harmony with what seems from history and experience to be the natural direction of English progress,” and Wilkinson is only one among the many who have recently elaborated on that theme:The crisis of 1297 … placed a definite check on the tendencies which Edward I had shown, to ignore the deep principles of the constitution under stress of the necessities which confronted the nation … It was a landmark in the advance of the knights … toward political maturity. It helped to establish the tradition of co-operation and political alliance between the knights and the magnates, on which a good deal of the political future of England was to depend …. What the opposition achieved, in 1297, was a great vindication of the ancient political principle of government by consent ….


2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
HENRY Y. H. ZHAO

The 25 years of the post-Mao era of Chinese fiction is divided into two distinct stages: the pre-1989 period, and the post-1989 period. If this division is true about almost everything else in China, it is especially true with literature. This is because literature had been used as a lethal weapon for political struggle by Mao before and during his regime, and this tradition, though strongly challenged in the post-Mao era, still lingers, though in very different forms now and much watered down. Even the recent trends of art for art's sake, or for the sake of entertainment, or for the sake of religious consciousness, could also be read as political gestures, and are indeed treated as such by Chinese literary officialdom, and also by Western China experts. Despite the fact that Chinese fiction has been highly politicized, this paper will examine, as much as possible, the development of fiction as an art. Only the artistic quality can support my argument that recent novels from China deserve not only more scholarly attention but also more reader appreciation than they have hitherto received around the world.


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