A critical investigation of power and ideology through the Special Tribunal for Lebanon

This thesis looks at a familiar topic for studies on Lebanon, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, but in a markedly different way. Specifically, it conceives of the STL as a mediating institution between world order and the idiosyncratic Lebanese state-society. Moreover, it conceives of this mediation as existing within a historical structure of world order. It provides explanation and understanding of their dialectical interaction through a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of contemporary court transcripts, and a comparative historical analysis with the 1860 European Intervention in Syria; a political-legal intervention of the nineteenth century. This analysis of the long-term interactions of legal and political power is done with a view to understanding whether its exercise is emancipatory and legitimate or ideological and dominating. The thesis finds that modern Lebanon has been, and continues to be, constituted historically through judicial intervention from world order.