The Body of the Crime: When Does Law Give Way to History

Linda Kinstler • Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows

October 13th @ 5pm • Room 100 of The Frank Center for Public Affairs

Historians and legal scholars often speak of “gaps” in law, referring to blind spots, loopholes, and other conspicuous failures of legal judgment. Some hope that these gaps might one day be filled—perhaps by the introduction of new laws or novel legal arguments—while others argue that these gaps are irremediable because they are intrinsic to law itself. When courts fail to recognize and punish crimes, history is frequently invoked as an alternative arbiter of truth and justice—tomorrow’s historians, we are assured, will make up for and correct the mistakes of today’s judges, fill in the gaps that they could not or would not see. But what happens when this relation is disrupted or reversed, when law is wielded to manipulate history, to undermine or erase historical truths, and to ensure that the tribunal of history does not have the final word?

Genres of Proof
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