Book Review Symposium - Theaters of Pardoning Introduction by Amalia D. Kessler on March 16, 2020 Bernadette Meyler’s Theaters of Pardoning is a tour de force of legal, literary, and historical erudition, which packs a punch for key questions of law and justice today. In this Book Review Symposium, four prominent, interdisciplinary scholars, including Meyler herself, each reflect on particular aspects of the book’s many important contributions. Volume 72 (2019-2020)
Book Review Symposium - Theaters of Pardoning Acts of Oblivion by Kenji Yoshino on March 16, 2020 Bernadette Meyler’s Theaters of Pardoning offers a profound and provocative meditation on the relationship between forgiveness and the state. In this comment, I follow her methodological and substantive lead by taking literary and legal approaches to a curious form of pardoning she discusses in her work—the “Act of Oblivion.” The Act of Oblivion operated as a super-pardon: It was “a form of general amnesty erasing the record of the underlying events rather than simply remitting punishment.” Pardon is to oblivion as forgiving is to forgetting. Volume 72 (2019-2020)
Book Review Symposium - Theaters of Pardoning The Ends of Pardoning by Peter Brooks on March 16, 2020 Theaters of Pardoning is itself an exemplary act of law and literature scholarship, in which each of these fields illuminates the other. Meyler’s book transcends the impasse of law and literature scholarship in that it privileges neither of its fields but instead creates a dialogue between them. That takes tact and balance, as well as deep understanding of the two fields set in juxtaposition. Volume 72 (2019-2020)
Book Review Symposium - Theaters of Pardoning The Drama of the Pardon, the Aesthetics of Governing and Judging by Robert Weisberg on March 16, 2020 Theaters of Pardoning is the one of the rare works that shows how legal authority and literary form interact catalytically in the conduct of government and adjudication. The heart of the book’s contribution to law-literature scholarship, however, lies in its demonstration of how the aesthetic development of the genre of tragicomedy both mirrored and influenced adjustments in the strategy of royal pardoning employed to buttress sovereignty. Volume 72 (2019-2020)
Book Review Symposium - Theaters of Pardoning Trump’s Theater of Pardoning by Bernadette Meyler on March 16, 2020 Like some of the real-life and fictional kings who appear in my book, Theaters of Pardoning, Trump has also called law and legal regimes into question through his pardons, and, in doing so, asserted his own impunity from law. Ignoring the common law restrictions that had accreted around pardoning, Trump has chosen to interpret his power as absolute, unfettered by norms like refraining from judging in one’s own case and forgiving but not forgetting. Trump’s numerous revisions of history represent even more pervasive efforts at enacting amnesty and oblivion. Volume 72 (2019-2020)