Trials of those responsible for large-scale state brutality have captured public imagination in several countries. Prosecutors and judges in such cases, says Osiel, rightly aim to shape collective memory. They can do so hi ways successful as public spectacle and consistent with liberal legality. In defending this interpretation, he examines the Nuremburg and Tokyo trials, the Eicnmann prosecution, and more recent trials in Argentina and France. Such trials can never summon up a "collective conscience" of moral principles shared by all, he argues. But they can nonetheless contribute to a little-noticed kind of social solidarity. To this end, writes Osiel, we should pay closer attention to the way an experience of administrative massacre is framed within the conventions of competing theatrical genres. Defense counsel will tell the story as a tragedy, while prosecutors will present it as a morality play. The judicial task at such moments is to employ the law to recast the courtroom drama in terms of a "theater of ideas," which engages large questions of collective memory and even national identity. Osiel asserts that principles of liberal morality can be most effectively inculcated in a society traumatized by fratricide when proceedings are conducted in this fashion. The approach Osiel advocates requires courts to confront questions of historical interpretation and moral pedagogy generally regarded as beyond their professional competence. It also raises objections that defendants' rights will be sacrificed, historical understanding distorted, and that the law cannot willfully influence collective memory, at least not when lawyers acknowledge this aim. Osiel responds to all these objections, and others. Lawyers, judges, sociologists, historians, and political theorists will find this a compelling contribution to debates on the meaning and consequences of genocide.

Is it possible that the soldiers of mass atrocities--Adolph Eichmann in Nazi Germany and Alfredo Astiz in Argentina's Dirty War, for example--act under conditions that prevent them from recognizing their crimes? In the aftermath of catastrophic, state-sponsored mass murder, how are criminal courts to respond to those who either gave or carried out the military orders that seem unequivocally criminal? This important book addresses Hannah Arendt's controversial argument that perpetrators of mass crimes are completely unaware of their wrongdoing, and therefore existing criminal laws do not adequately address these defendants. Mark Osiel applies Arendt's ideas about the kind of people who implement bureaucratized large-scale atrocities to Argentina's Dirty War of the 1970s, and he also delves into the social conditions that could elicit such reprehensible conduct. He focuses on Argentine navy captain Astiz, who led one of the most notorious abduction squads, to discover how he and other junior officers could justify the murders of more than ten thousand suspected "subversives." Osiel concludes that legal stipulations labeling certain deeds as manifestly illegal are indefensible. He calls for a significant change in the laws of war to preserve both justice and the possibility of dialogue between factions in such sharply divided societies as Argentina. Osiel's proposals have profound implications for future prosecutions of Pinochet's lieutenants, Milosevic's henchmen, the willing executioners of Rwanda and East Timor, and other perpetrators of state-endorsed murder and torture.

To this end, writes Osiel, we should pay closer attention to the way an experience of administrative massacre is framed within the conventions of competing theatrical genres. Defense counsel will tell the story as a tragedy, while prosecutors will present it as a morality play. The judicial task at such moments is to employ the law to recast the courtroom drama in terms of a "theater of ideas," which engages large questions of collective memory and even national identity. Osiel asserts that principles of liberal morality can be most effectively inculcated in a society traumatized by fratricide when proceedings are conducted in this fashion.

Trials of those responsible for large-scale state brutality have captured public imagination in several countries. Prosecutors and judges in such cases, says Osiel, rightly aim to shape collective memory. They can do so hi ways successful as public spectacle and consistent with liberal legality. In defending this interpretation, he examines the Nuremburg and Tokyo trials, the Eicnmann prosecution, and more recent trials in Argentina and France. Such trials can never summon up a "collective conscience" of moral principles shared by all, he argues. But they can nonetheless contribute to a little-noticed kind of social solidarity. To this end, writes Osiel, we should pay closer attention to the way an experience of administrative massacre is framed within the conventions of competing theatrical genres. Defense counsel will tell the story as a tragedy, while prosecutors will present it as a morality play. The judicial task at such moments is to employ the law to recast the courtroom drama in terms of a "theater of ideas," which engages large questions of collective memory and even national identity. Osiel asserts that principles of liberal morality can be most effectively inculcated in a society traumatized by fratricide when proceedings are conducted in this fashion. The approach Osiel advocates requires courts to confront questions of historical interpretation and moral pedagogy generally regarded as beyond their professional competence. It also raises objections that defendants' rights will be sacrificed, historical understanding distorted, and that the law cannot willfully influence collective memory, at least not when lawyers acknowledge this aim. Osiel responds to all these objections, and others. Lawyers, judges, sociologists, historians, and political theorists will find this a compelling contribution to debates on the meaning and consequences of genocide.

This highly original work provides a thought-provoking and valuable resource for researchers and academics with an interest in genocide, criminology, international organizations, and law and society. In her book, Caroline Fournet examines the law relating to genocide and explores the apparent failure of society to provide an adequate response to incidences of mass atrocity. The work casts a legal perspective on this social phenomenon to show that genocide fails to be appropriately remembered due to inherent defects in the law of genocide itself. The book thus connects the social response to the legal theory and practice, and trials in particular. Fournet's study illustrates the shortcomings of the Genocide Convention as a means of preventing and punishing genocide as well as its consequent failure to ensure the memory of this heinous crime.

Genocide, crimes against humanity, and the worst war crimes are possible only when the state or other organisations mobilise and co-ordinate the efforts of many people. Responsibility for mass atrocity is always widely shared, often by thousands. Yet criminal law, with its liberal underpinnings, prefers to blame particular individuals for isolated acts. Is such law, therefore, constitutionally unable to make any sense of the most catastrophic conflagrations of our time? Drawing on the experience of several prosecutions, this book both trenchantly diagnoses the law's limits at such times and offers a spirited defence of its moral and intellectual resources for meeting the vexing challenge of holding anyone criminally accountable for mass atrocity. Just as war criminals develop new methods of eluding law's historic grasp, so criminal law flexibly devises novel responses to their stratagems. Mark Osiel examines several such legal innovations in international jurisprudence and proposes still others.

In the last few decades, there are few concepts that have rivaled "collective memory" for attention in the humanities and social sciences. Indeed, use of the term has extended far beyond scholarship to the realm of politics and journalism, where it has appeared in speeches at the centers of power and on the front pages of the world's leading newspapers. Seen by scholars in numerous fields as a hallmark characteristic of our age, an idea crucial for understanding our present social, political, and cultural conditions, collective memory now guides inquiries into diverse, though connected, phenomena. Nevertheless, there remains a great deal of confusion about the meaning, origin, and implication of the term and the field of inquiry it underwrites. The Collective Memory Reader presents, organizes, and evaluates past work and contemporary contributions on collective memory. Combining seminal texts, hard-to-find classics, previously untranslated references, and contemporary landmarks, it will serve as a key reference in the field. In addition to a thorough introduction, which outlines a useful past for contemporary memory studies, The Collective Memory Reader includes five sections-Precursors and Classics; History, Memory, and Identity; Power, Politics, and Contestation; Media and Modes of Transmission; Memory, Justice, and the Contemporary Epoch-comprising ninety-one texts. A short editorial essay introduces each of the sections, while brief capsules frame each of the selected texts. An indispensable guide, The Collective Memory Reader is at once a definitive entry point into the field for students and an essential resource for scholars.

This book asks the question: what is the role of memory during a political transition? Drawing on Ethiopian history, transitional justice, and scholarly fields concerned with memory, museums and trauma, the author reveals a complex picture of global, transnational, national and local forces as they converge in the story of the creation and continued life of one modest museum in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa—the Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum. It is a study from multiple margins: neither the case of Ethiopia nor memorialization is central to transitional justice discourse, and within Ethiopia, the history of the Red Terror is sidelined in contemporary politics. From these nested margins, traumatic memory emerges as an ambiguous social and political force. The contributions, meaning and limitations of memory emerge at the point of discrete interactions between memory advocates, survivor-docents and visitors. Memory from the margins is revealed as powerful for how it disrupts, not builds, new forms of community.

"Never again!" the world has vowed time and again since the Holocaust. Yet genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other mass atrocity crimes continue to shock our consciences—from the killing fields of Cambodia to the machetes of Rwanda to the agony of Darfur. Gareth Evans has grappled with these issues firsthand. As Australian foreign minister, he was a key broker of the United Nations peace plan for Cambodia. As president of the International Crisis Group, he now works on the prevention and resolution of scores of conflicts and crises worldwide. The primary architect of and leading authority on the Responsibility to Protect ("R2P"), he shows here how this new international norm can once and for all prevent a return to the killing fields. The Responsibility to Protect captures a simple and powerful idea. The primary responsibility for protecting its own people from mass atrocity crimes lies with the state itself. State sovereignty implies responsibility, not a license to kill. But when a state is unwilling or unable to halt or avert such crimes, the wider international community then has a collective responsibility to take whatever action is necessary. R2P emphasizes preventive action above all. That includes assistance for states struggling to contain potential crises and for effective rebuilding after a crisis or conflict to tackle its underlying causes. R2P's primary tools are persuasion and support, not military or other coercion. But sometimes it is right to fight: faced with another Rwanda, the world cannot just stand by. R2P was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly at the 2005 World Summit. But many misunderstandings persist about its scope and limits. And much remains to be done to solidify political support and to build institutional capacity. Evans shows, compellingly, how big a break R2P represents from the past, and how, with its acceptance in principle and effective application in practice, the promise of "Never