The Trial: A History, from Socrates to O. J. Simpson
by Sadakat Kadri
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For as long as accuser and accused have faced each other in public, criminal trials have been establishing far more than who did what to whom, and in this fascinating book, Sadakat Kadri surveys four thousand years of courtroom drama. Kadri journeys from the silence of ancient Egypt's Hall of the Dead to the clamor of twenty-first-century Hollywood to show how emotion and fear have inspired Western notions of justice, and the extent to which they still riddle its trials today. He explains, show more for example, how the jury emerged in medieval England from trials by fire and water, in which validations of vengeance were presumed to be divinely supervised, and how delusions identical to those that once sent witches to the stake were revived as accusations of Satanic child abuse during the 1980s. Lifting the lid on a particularly bizarre niche of legal history, he tells how European lawyers once prosecuted animals, objects, and corpses, and argues that the same instinctive urge to punish is still apparent when a child or mentally ill defendant is accused of sufficiently heinous crimes. But this history is about aspiration as well as ignorance. It shows how principles such as the right to silence and the right to confront witnesses, hallmarks of due process guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, were derived from the Bible by twelfth-century monks. It also tells of show trials from Tudor England to Stalin's Soviet Union, but contends that "no-trials", in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, are just as repugnant to Western traditions of justice and fairness. With governments everywhere eroding legal protections in the name of an indefinite war on terror, this analysis could hardly be timelier. Encyclopedic and entertaining, comprehensive and colorful, this book rewards curiosity and an appreciation of the absurd but tackles as well questions that are profound. Who has the right to judge, and why? What did past civilizations hope to achieve through scapegoats and sacrifices, and to what extent are defendants still made to bear the sins of society at large? The author addresses such themes through scores of meticulously researched stories, all told with the verve and wit. show lessTags
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The story of the criminal trial, from Socrates, an early self-represented defendant, to O.J Simpson, the beneficiary of a bothched prosecution. In between is an ingloruis history of torture, execution, papal Inquisitions, bad evidence and lively barristers. A well-written, interesting, lively history and worth reading for its more serious aspects. Discusses in depth the Nuremberg trials, the Moscow show trials of the '30s and the lack of trial of U.S commanders who authorised torture at Abu Gharib. Wonderful book.
Criminal barrister Alex McBride has chosen to discuss The Trial: A History from Socrates to O J Simpson by Sadakat Kadri, on FiveBooks as one of the top five on his subject - Trial By Jury, saying that:
“…This is a jolly good read and informative about how trials fit together in history and there is a good bit about how the English trial by jury came about. At the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 Pope Innocent III decided you couldn’t ask God to decide on earthly affairs and so the old trial by ordeal was no longer acceptable. They used to put a red hot poker in your hand and then bind it up and if it healed nicely then you were in the clear but if it festered then you were guilty. Of course, if the evidence was weak they might cool show more the poker off a bit first. But now the authorities had a problem. How would they continue……”
The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/alex-mcbride show less
“…This is a jolly good read and informative about how trials fit together in history and there is a good bit about how the English trial by jury came about. At the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 Pope Innocent III decided you couldn’t ask God to decide on earthly affairs and so the old trial by ordeal was no longer acceptable. They used to put a red hot poker in your hand and then bind it up and if it healed nicely then you were in the clear but if it festered then you were guilty. Of course, if the evidence was weak they might cool show more the poker off a bit first. But now the authorities had a problem. How would they continue……”
The full interview is available here: http://fivebooks.com/interviews/alex-mcbride show less
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8 Works 265 Members
Sadakat Kadri is a practicing English barrister and qualified New York attorney, and the author of The Trial. He has a master's degree from Harvard Law School and has contributed to The Guardian, The Times (London), and the London Review of Books, and he is the winner of the 1998 Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for travel writing. He lives in London.
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