Jens Meierhenrich

Genocide continues to confound scholars, practitioners, and laypersons. This Reader lays the foundation for improved explanation and understanding of this darkest of human phenomena. The volume provides an introduction to the myriad dimensions of genocide, and to the various ways of making sense of it.

A Reader

Genocide

Ernst Fraenkel

The Dual State, first published in 1941, remains one of the most erudite books on the logic of dictatorship. It was the first comprehensive analysis of the rise and nature of National Socialism and the only such analysis written from within Hitler's Germany. Ernst Fraenkel's courageous ethnography of law was widely acclaimed upon publication, and it has influenced considerably postwar debates about the nature of the Third Reich. But The Dual State also has relevance for the study of dictatorship in the twenty-first century. Fraenkel's innovative concept of the dual state, with its two halvesthe normative state (which generally respects its own laws and regulations) and the prerogative state (which violates them wantonly) illuminates powerfully the complicated relationship between law and order in many countries around the world. It speaks directly to the idea of an authoritarian rule of law. This republication of Fraenkel's classic makes it once again available to scholars and students in law, the social sciences, and the humanities. It includes Fraenkel's 1974 preface to and two appendices from the first German editionnever before published in English. An extensive introduction by Jens Meierhenrich places Fraenkel's ethnography of law in historical and theoretical context.

A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship

The Dual State

This book offers an intellectual history of Ernst Fraenkel's classic The Dual State (1941), recently republished by OUP, and one of the most erudite books on the theory of dictatorship ever written. It was the first comprehensive analysis of the nature and rise of Nazism, and the only such analysis written from within Hitler's Germany.

An Ethnography of Nazi Law

The Remnants of the Rechtsstaat

Devin O. Pendas

From the trial of Socrates to the post-9/11 military commissions, trials have always been useful instruments of politics. Yet there is still much that we do not understand about them. Why do governments use trials to pursue political objectives, and when? What differentiates political trials from ordinary ones? Contrary to conventional wisdom, not all political trials are show trials or contrive to set up scapegoats. This volume offers a novel account of political trials that is empirically rigorous and theoretically sophisticated, linking state-of-the-art research on telling cases to a broad argument about political trials as a socio-legal phenomenon. All the contributors analyse the logic of the political in the courtroom. From archival research to participant observation, and from linguistic anthropology to game theory, the volume offers a genuinely interdisciplinary set of approaches that substantially advance existing knowledge about what political trials are, how they work, and why they matter.

Political Trials in Theory and History

Martin Loughlin

Associate Professor of International Relations Jens Meierhenrich

Introduces students, scholars, and practitioners to the theory and history of the rule of law.

The Cambridge Companion to the Rule of Law

This book presents an empirically rigorous and theoretically sophisticated account of political trials.

Jens Meierhenrich

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