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The article investigates the use of multiple narration in Robert Browning's Victorian epic poem "The Ring and the Book," a story on the murder of Pompilia Comparini and her husband's trial. It states that Browning uses multiple narration to mimic the narrative procedures of law. It also states that Browning's epic poem was influenced by Jeremy Bentham's theory of language and fiction. It explores the debates in nineteenth century over the issue on how the criminal trial was operated. It describes the court's failure on the criminal trial of Comparini murder in the epic poem "Ring and the Book." It explores the relation between legal system and fiction.

Silence is a method of torture in Saydnaya Military Prison. Lawrence Abu Hamdan, audio investigator and artist, interviewed former prisoners as part of investigations into the detention facility by Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture. Abu Hamdan heard testimony of torture that would neither be admissible in a law court nor appear in the news media. In response he created several works of art for which he was jointly awarded the Turner Prize in 2019. The artworks invite a critical examination of the basis on which the law of evidence enables testimony to be evaluated and excluded from legal trials. The world is assumed by the law to be comprised of people, objects and words that are ontologically discrete, and which exist independently from each other. The extent of the participation of the law in the way in which the world is constituted by mutually implicated practices of knowing and becoming is overlooked. There is inadequate engagement with the significance of the processes of legal systems for the outcomes of trials. By contrast, the work of Abu Hamdan opens encounters with a world in which subject and object are co-constituted through material and discursive entanglements. His art is an invitation to listen for the silences of others and the sounds of the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaphorical references to the devil in international criminal justice are various, varied and tap into a rich vein of allusion, association and meaning. These range from simple references to evil, to more complex referencing to Faustian pacts of one form or another, to the downright esoteric encompassing the arcane origins of the immunity erstwhile afforded to official acts. Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta's statement 'That devil shall be defeated' as well as Canadian General Romeo Dallaire's 'Shake Hands with the Devil' are two examples respectively resisting and promoting international individual criminal liability. That Carl Schmitt was asked by his interrogator at Nuremberg 'when did you renounce the devil?' and that defence counsel at the International Criminal court in the Kenyan Situation analogised the Kenyan government as being accused of entering into 'a deal with the devil', to the judge at Rudolf Kastner's case in Israel related to Nazi-era crimes described him as having 'sold his soul to the devil'; cut across perpetrators and victims and speak of knowing and willing compacts with evil in order to, allegedly, produce good. Which is to say that they are all political theodicies explaining away evil by linking it in some causal way to good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The criminal courtroom is a place of competing narratives. Which narrative eventually becomes the basis of a conviction or an acquittal depends largely on how stories are told and how they are reconstructed by the fact finder. The construction and reconstruction of stories does not happen mechanically; lawyers and juries have a desire to create typical, exemplary narratives that resonate with their understanding of the world. This understanding can interfere with narratives that are not typical--the (potential) stories of innocence. Through the work of innocence projects, it has become clear that often the narrative that prevailed in court did not reflect what actually happened. Defendants were convicted for crimes they did not commit, and the stories of their innocence were lost. DNA evidence was used to exonerate many of the defendants, but this paper argues that even in the age of DNA evidence, the story model is still key to understanding the creation of legal reality because it allows the jury to develop narratives that have a much greater influence on the decision than facts or norms alone and that are basically unreviewable. Beyond individual cases, it is also the procedural, technical set-up--the blueprint--of a criminal justice system that choreographs storytelling. To exemplify this, I will contrast the adversarial system, which stresses the contest of narratives, with the inquisitorial model, where narratives are developed through an investigation by a judge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, criminal cases that have occurred between 1830 and 1914 related to the deaf-mute defendants have been discussed. Questions regarding the nature of the trial as a communicative process have been raised for the trials of deaf-mutes, and the cases in which defendants that were not deaf but mute of malice have been reflected in the literary works of Daniel Defoe and Walter Scott. It informs that those defendants who were unable to account themselves were classified as unfit for trial.

An essay is presented on the differences among the legal culture of America, Great Britain and Germany with regards to de-Americanizing Law and Literature scholarship. The author mentions that British Law and Literature differs from its American counterpart when it comes to common legal history and common language wherein she tackles the flexibility and practicality of the English law. The author also relates the significance of the Teutonic legal traditions in Germany.

An essay is presented which explores the philosophies of history in fiction and law detective stories. It mentions that the analytical detective story views that the past events have a fixed relation to the existing situations which can be useful in explaining the causal principles of the mystery. Meanwhile, the cynical detective does not adopt a teleological attitude in the past and believes that the validation of facts must be based on proof and evidence.