scholarly journals Judicialising history or historicisng law: reflections on Irving v Penguin Books and Lipstadt

2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-320
Author(s):  
Therese O'Donnell
Keyword(s):  
Public History ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Expert Witnesses ◽  
Expert Evidence ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Historical Expertise ◽  
The Relationship

In 2000, David Irving brought a libel action against Professor Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books focusing on allegedly defamatory allegations in her book Denying the Holocaust associating him with the Holocaust revisionist movement. The case concluded in April 2000 with Irving’s defeat. By focusing on Irving’s methodological technique, the defendants succeeded in establishing that Irving’s misrepresentations and falsifications were neither accidental nor careless but ideologically motivated. His character was presented and censured as one which manipulated and distorted in order to facilitate a racist agenda. Presiding judge, Mr Justice Gray was keen not to pollute the exercise of justice by acting as a quasi-historian, nevertheless Irving sharpened the focus on the relationship between historians and courts. Can history migrate from the amphitheatre to the witness box and re-emerge with its integrity intact? Historians are increasingly called as expert witnesses and this has resulted in huge controversies, intra-historian strife and debates on experts’ ethics. Thus, despite this article’s mooring in a Holocaust context, it raises questions relevant to the much wider context of history and law, and as regards “public history”. Law and history will meet continuously during litigation. Judicial and historical understandings of evidence should not be either intuitively or automatically elided and even a Holocaust context should not conquer the quest for a mutually self-aware relationship. Without engaging in endless discussions concerning the nature of knowledge and the philosophy of history, judges require standards for assessing the weight of historical evidence to ensure “intellectual due process” and that, evidentially at least, legal conclusions are sound. How can historians best facilitate the legal process and how can lawyers avoid mistranslating historical work? A legally created standard (such as Mr Justice Gray attempted) for expert evidence appears attractive. Admissibility or reliability tests are options and open up issues such as bar-appointed experts and expert ethical codes. Ultimately, the quest is not to crowbar unwilling historians into roles as mere judicial handmaidens, but instead to recognise wider societal contributions of historians and to give due credit to the 'reasonable historian'. When historians appear as expert witnesses, they are not 'doing history', they are communicating historical expertise in another forum. Such cross-pollinating communication or 'public history' is a process of translation. Undoubtedly, law is the dominant discipline in court and history is being instrumentalised. However, with due care, such interactions need not distort complex historical studies or restrict future historical research. Disciplinary faithfulness can be preserved by legal reliance on historical guild-standards. In this way, standards regarding intellectual rigour and methodological integrity are safeguarded and notions that there is one history for historians and another/lesser one for courts are avoided.

scholarly journals Performing Expertise: The Design of Audiovisual Links and the Construction of the Remote Expert Witness in Court

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 698-718
Author(s):  
Emma Rowden ◽  
Anne Wallace
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Load ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Expert Testimony ◽  
Expert Witness ◽  
Mode Of Delivery ◽  
Expert Witnesses ◽  
Expert Evidence ◽  
Jury Trials ◽  
Technological Improvements ◽  
The Relationship

This article reports on empirical research conducted into the use of audiovisual links (videolinks) to take expert testimony in jury trials. Studies reveal ambivalent attitudes to court use of videolink, with most previous research focussed on its use for vulnerable witnesses and defendants. Our study finds there are issues unique to expert witnesses appearing by videolink, such as compromised ability to gesture and interact with exhibits and demonstrative tools, and reductions in availability of feedback to gauge juror understanding. Overall, the use of videolinks adds an additional cognitive load to the task of giving expert evidence. While many of these issues might be addressed through environmental or technological improvements, we argue this research has broader ramifications for expert witnesses and the courts. The use of videolinks for taking expert evidence exposes the contingent nature of expertise and the cultural scaffolding inherent in its construction. In reflecting on the implications of these findings, and on the way that reliability, credibility and expertise are defined and established in court, we suggest a more critical engagement with the relationship between content and mode of delivery by stakeholders.

Lament and Revenge in the Hekabe of Euripides

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian M. Billing
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Funerary Practices ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The University ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Female Lament

In this article Christian M. Billing considers the relationship between female lament and acts of vengeance in fifth-century Athenian society and its theatre, with particular emphasis on the Hekabe of Euripides. He uses historical evidence to argue that female mourning was held to be a powerfully transgressive force in the classical period; that considerable social tensions existed as a result of the suppression of female roles in traditional funerary practices (social control arising from the move towards democracy and the development of forensic processes as a means of social redress); and that as a piece of transvestite theatre, authored and performed by men to an audience made up largely, if not entirely, of that sex, Euripides' Hekabe demonstrates significant gender-related anxiety regarding the supposedly horrific consequences of allowing women to speak at burials, or to engage in lament as part of uncontrolled funerary ritual. Christian M. Billing is an academic and theatre practitioner working in the fields of ancient Athenian and early modern English and European drama. He has worked extensively as a director and actor and has also taught at a number of universities in the United Kingdom and the USA. He is currently Lecturer in Drama at the University of Hull.

The Historian’s Role, Public History, and the National Truth Commission in Brazil

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Samantha Viz Quadrat
Keyword(s):  
Public History ◽  
Truth Commission ◽  
Final Report ◽  
Military Dictatorship ◽  
Brazilian Government ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
National Reconciliation ◽  
Do So

AbstractIn 2011, twenty-six years after the end of the military dictatorship, the Brazilian government took the initiative of implementing the right to memory and to the truth, as well as promoting national reconciliation. A National Truth Commission was created aiming at examining and shedding light on serious human rights violations practiced by government agents from 1946 to 1985. It worked across the entire national territory for almost three years and established partnerships with governments of other countries in order to investigate and expose the international networks created by dictatorships for monitoring and persecuting political opponents across borders. This article analyzes the relationship between historians and the National Truth Commission in Brazil, in addition to the construction of dictatorship public history in the country. In order to do so, the Commission’s relationship with the national community of historians, the works carried out, as well as historians’ reactions towards its works, from its creation until its final report in 2014, will be examined.

A Consideration of the Relationship between the Rules of Court and the Code of Ethics in Forensic Psychiatry

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 20-25
Author(s):  
Peter C. Gaughwin
Keyword(s):  
Forensic Psychiatry ◽  
Code Of Ethics ◽  
Clinical Work ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
Forensic Assessment ◽  
Expert Witnesses ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Medical Speciality ◽  
Personal Conflict ◽  
The Relationship

Objective To consider the relationship between the Rules of Court for expert witnesses and the revised Ethical Guideline No. 9 and Practice Guideline No. 9 of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) and how this affects the responsibilities that psychiatrists have to a court and to their profession, when they enter the legal arena. Method Literature relevant to the subject, the Federal Court rules relating to expert witnesses and the RANZCP Guidelines are discussed and compared, with examples used to illustrate particular issues that arise from time to time in the civil jurisdiction. A distinction is drawn between the functions of those psychiatrists who undertake forensic assessment and those who undertake clinical work, and some of the ethical challenges facing forensic psychiatrists are considered. Results The Rules of Court relating to expert witnesses and the RANZCP Guidelines No. 9 have a complementary relationship and are thus ethically consistent with each other and provide a basis for psychiatrists to maintain and enhance the integrity of their profession. Conclusion Forensic psychiatry is a particularly complex medical speciality and one that can create enormous personal conflict for clinicians, especially those who are not forensic consultants. It may therefore be time for the College to develop an accreditation process for those prepared to undertake further study in the nature and practice of forensic psychiatry.

TRANSLATION OF SOCIAL CITIZENSHIP TO ARCHITECTURE & BUILT ENVIRONMENT: A METHODOLOGICAL REVIEW

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohd Noorizhar Ismail ◽  
Abdul Razak Sapian ◽  
Peter Scriver ◽  
Mizanur Rashid
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Religious Buildings ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
Local Acceptance ◽  
The Relationship

Social Citizenship is a concept that is used to represent acceptance and identity by the local community. This is a manifestation expressed in the form of space, monument or buildings. Buildings such as mosques and other religious buildings are a form of manifestation to such expression left for other generations to see and study. This manifestation of citizenship through religious buildings can be an expression of struggle, establishment, sense of belonging and local acceptance towards achieving social citizenship. The understanding of this concept implicitly shows that these elements are the driving forces behind the architecture that is erected in order to find approval from the local population. This paper reviews the employed research designs, methods and procedures in the process of understanding the translation of social citizenship to architecture expressed by mosques. The methods adopted were aimed toward obtaining archival/historical evidence that can elicit proof of the concept. The methods also involved the process of inquiry that would be the basis for discussion and to draw a conclusion to the relationship between social citizenship and architecture. This paper also highlights the strengths and limitations of the methodological techniques besides spelling out the variables needed to prove the relationship.

scholarly journals To the question of the relationship between the brothers of Sheptytskyi and the Jews

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-178
Author(s):  
Ivan Matkovskyy
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Deep Relationship ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

The history of relations of the Sheptytskyj family and the Jewish people reaches back to those remote times when the representatives of the Sheptytskyi lineage held high and honorable secular and clerical posts, and the Jews, either upon invitation of King Danylo of Halych or King Casimir the Great, began to build up their own world in Halychyna. Throughout the whole life of Metropolitan Sheptytskyi and Blessed Martyr Klymentii, a thread of cooperation with the Jews is traceable. It should be noted that heroic deeds of the Sheptytskyi Brothers to save Jews during the Second World War were not purely circumstantial: they were preceded by a long-standing deep relationship with representatives of Jewish culture. In addition, the sense of responsibility of the Spiritual Pastor, as advocated by the Brothers, extended to all people of different religions and genesis with no exception. The world-view principles of Metropolitan Sheptytskyi are important for us in order to understand what was going on in the then society in attitude to the Jews. Also, of importance is the influence of the Metropolitan on Kasymyr Sheptytskyi, later Fr. Klymentii, because the Archbishop was not only his Brother, but also a church authority and the leader. And if from under the Metropolitan Sheptytskyi’s pen letters and pastorals were published, they were directives, instructions, edifications and explanations for the faithful and the clergy, and not at all, the products of His own reflections or personal experiences, which Archbishop Andrey wanted to share with the faithful. On the grounds of the available archive materials, an effort to reconstruct the chief moments of those relations was undertaken, aiming among others, to illustrate the fact that the saving of Jews during the Holocaust was not incidental, nor with any underlying reasons behind, but a natural manifestation of a good Christian tradition of «Love thy Neighbor», to which the Sheptytskyj were faithful. Keywords: Andrey Sheptytskyi, the Blessed Hieromartyr Klymentii Sheptytskyi, Jews, the Holocaust, Galicia, Righteous Among the Nations.

scholarly journals Standardized Flexibility: The Choreography of ICT in Standardization of Service Work

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 679-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Røhnebæk
Keyword(s):  
Information System ◽  
Information Systems ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Responses ◽  
Information And Communication ◽  
The Relationship

This article is based on a research project that explores the proliferation of information and communication technology (ICT) in public services. Furthermore, the research explores how the enhanced presence of ICT relates to efforts to increas-ingly individualise the service delivery. It can be argued that enhanced individualisation requires increased levels of discretion and flexibility. At the same time, this flexibility needs to be implemented within a standardized framework to ensure due process and to meet demands for efficiency. As local-level work practices in the public services are increasingly being enabled through ICT, the information systems can thus be seen to offer ’standardized flexibility’. Hence, the information systems work as both enablers of flexibility and as controllers of the same. This research explores how this duality manifests empirically at the local-level of the Norwegian employment and welfare services (NAV). It focuses on the in-terface of the information systems and local-level employees. In this article, I portray the role of the information system, Arena, with regard to how the front-line employees structure and organize their work. This portrayal reveals that the information system reflects an ideal world which is out of tune with local working conditions. The employees are thus facing gaps between the ideals of the system and their actual work context. The main purpose of the paper is to illustrate how the employees deal with this gap; I identify three types of responses and strategies. Moreover, I suggest that the relationship between the information systems and different kinds of local responses may be fruitfully analysed by drawing an analogy with choreography and dancing. The second purpose of this article is thus to outline how the metaphor of choreography may provide a suitable theoretical lens for analysing ICT-enabled standardization of work.

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