The Trial: A History from Socrates to O. J. Simpson - Hardcover

9780007111213: The Trial: A History from Socrates to O. J. Simpson
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 

In an extraordinary history of the criminal trial, Sadakat Kadri traces the development of criminal justice from the marbled courtrooms of Athens, past the torture chambers of the Inquisition to the judicial theatres of seventeenth-century Salem, from 1930s Moscow and post-war Nuemberg to the virtual courtooms of modern Hollywood.

For as long as accuser and accused have faced each other in public, criminal trials have been establishing more than who did what to whom, and in this fascinating book Sadakat Kadri, a practicing barrister, surveys over four thousand years of courtroom drama. Encyclopaedic and entertaining, comprehensive and colourful, The Trial addresses many profound themes with verve and wit. Who has the right to judge, and why? What did past civilisations hope to achieve through scapegoats and sacrifices – and to what extent are defendants still made to bear the sins of society at large?

In the book, Kadri journeys from the silence of ancient Egypt’s Hall of the Dead to the clamour of twenty-first century Hollywood to show how emotions and fears have inspired western notions of justice – and the extent to which they still riddle its trials today. He explains, for example, how juries emerged in medieval England as a variation on trials by fire and water, a divinely supervised validation of vengeance, and how delusions precisely identical to those that sent witches to the stake revived as Satanic child abuse accusations during the 1980s.

Although Justice’s sword has always been double-edged – as ready to destroy a community’s enemies as to defend its dreams of due process – the judicial contest also operates to enshrine some of the western world’s most cherished values. The show trials of Stalin's Soviet Union were shams, but Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib act as a reminder that no-trials are equally unjust, and at a time when our familiar constitutional landscape seems to be melting away, an appreciation of the criminal courtroom’s history is more necessary than ever.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:
'A talented stylist who knows how to tell a good story...Kadri's book is big and broad-minded...' -- Financial Times

'He tells a good story, defly managing to mix anecdote and serious analysis. An impressive performance' -- The Times

'You don't have to agree with Kadri's political views to find his history of the trial engaging stuff' -- Daily Telegraph

'a mine of information and an entertaining read, written with wit and style' -- Sunday Telegraph

'amusing and colourful and a deeply thoughtful book of contemporary relevance' -- The Guardian

'an interesting and timely book' -- The Observer

'scholarly and instructive' -- John Mortimer,The Spectator
From the Author:
About the author
The Dream of Justice: Sarah O’Reilly talks to Sadakat Kadri
(extract found in the P.S Section)
Was there anything that surprised him during the course of writing the book?
‘Well, one thing that surprised me, although it seems very obvious now, is the dual nature of the trial. When I started writing, I hadn’t decided in my head whether it was a good or a bad thing and I didn’t consciously recognize there were two aspects to it – that it both holds back state power and validates it. It was only after a while that I realized I hadn’t recognized this because I had been asking the wrong question. There wasn’t a dichotomy between the two. The trial can be both a good thing and an absolutely wicked thing: what’s important is that we recognize its Janus-faced aspect.’

He was also surprised to discover that only 1 to 5 per cent of cases actually end up in trial anyway. ‘When I first realized that I thought, why am I writing this book? But then I realized that this doesn’t mean the trial is unimportant: it actually means that any trial you do see is even more important. It also makes you wonder, why this trial? What’s going on behind the closed doors?’ And it’s this sense of curiosity that ultimately unites Sadakat Kadri’s two halves: the combination of the writer’s attraction to those events that unfold in the shadows, and the lawyer’s wish to interrogate them.
About the book
The Difference Between God and Lawyers
by Sadakat Kadri
Soon after I began working on this book, in mid-2001, I read about Kenneth Kinnaird. The 43-year-old Glaswegian had just persuaded the Scottish Court of Appeal that telling a couple of police officers to ‘fuck off’ was not a criminal offence. According to the senior judge, Lord Prosser, Kinnaird’s suggestion merely reflected ‘the language of his generation’. That was certainly plausible, and the result seemed sensible enough, but Prosser’s remark set me thinking. If he had been the one at the receiving end of Kinnaird’s language, he would probably have been rather less tolerant of it. The criminal courtroom is an odd place: ruffians and deviants constitute its clientele but they are subject to the most punctilious etiquette; and the friction between rules and ruled threatens to explode, or at least startle, at any point. I was tangentially reminded of another scatological defendant, this one apocryphal, who was asked what he had to say for himself before sentence was imposed!
. ‘Fuck all,’ he mumbled. All eyes turned to the judge, who was staring with perplexity at defence counsel. ‘What did your client say?’ he inquired. ‘It was "fuck all", your honour,’ drawled the barrister. ‘Are you sure?’ came the surprised reply. ‘I could have sworn I saw his lips move.’

This book could have been dedicated to that judge. No one is likely to forget that trials can be grim affairs, but the tension that turns his remark into a punch line means that they are often ludicrous as well. Although the criminal law enshrines sentiments that aim high, it is administered by, and to, some very ordinary people; and the interaction between ideals and reality has produced the tragicomedy of the trial drama – a romping, stomping, threatening tale of passions imperfectly restrained, and hysteria barely controlled.

The comic element comes, admittedly, with too much gore to tickle everyone’s funny bone. I recall one New Yorker, initially curious to learn more about my book, whom I then tried to amuse with anecdotes about legally aided corpses and executed pigs. ‘Wow ...’ she murmured, with some concern. ‘You’re in a dark place.’ Eighteen months into my contract, with no manuscript in sight, I certainly was. My chat-up lines could also have done with a rethink. But, at the risk of proving my solemnity as well as my gloom, I maintain that the tales with which I regaled her were not just gems of wit; they encapsulate an absurdity that lies at the heart of the legal enterprise.

In the name of justice, monomaniacal lawyers have perpetrated monstrous violence, but they have also developed a surreal logic that could validate the prosecution of werewolves and mandate the execution of failed suicides. Their claims to authority and integrity have been noisy, but their reputation for chicanery has been even more enduring. The stereotypical lawyer is neither admirable nor honourable, but laughable – routinely matched against skunks, sharks and laboratory rats, and never coming off well from the comparison.

As this book’s title might imply, there is one writer who, I think, nailed the delusional aspects of the law better than any other – Franz Kafka. All his stories evince his lifelong fascination with the power of rules over the individual, and even those on ostensibly non-legal themes are narrated with a forensic precision that owes much to the law degree he earned at Prague’s Charles University. But though their protagonists analyse their various peculiar predicaments in great detail, they are never able to resolve them. Whether it is Gregor Samsa, struggling to come to terms with his transformation into a giant beetle; an inquisitive dog, too engrossed in trying to work out where food comes from to notice the human beings that surround it; or a subterranean creature, obsessing to the point of paralysis over the intruder that may or may not be about to burst into its burrow, their rationality is as rigorous as it is unhinged. Obstacles and risks are apprehended with crystal!
clarity, but the way to surmount them is inconceivable. The hope of discerning a pattern to existence vies with the ominous possibility that the universe might be a very malign place indeed. Inquiry itself seems counterproductive – because logic is not so much a tool, as a trap.

Kafka’s gnomic wisdom entirely transcends the nuts and bolts of actual legal procedures; but, just as a stray profanity can throw light on the dynamics of a courtroom, so his pessimism speaks volumes about justice. The gulf between our dreams and our capacities means that courts, like any human institution, are imperfect – and it became ever clearer to me while writing this book that few people do more to compound the imperfections than the lawyers and politicians who pretend otherwise. Courts regularly promise answers that they cannot deliver, and the results can be farcical – but when they are allowed to forget their own fallibility, the course is set for tragedy.

That is not to say that justice lacks meaning. Anyone who has ever been burgled or biffed knows that crime is more than a sociological construct, and injustice takes countless tangible forms, from the lethal injections of US death-penalty states to the amputations of Islamic ones. But justice depends on humility at least as much as nobility – and at a time when magnificent ideals are being trumpeted to justify such things as torture and detention without trial, the frequent laughability of legal pretensions stands as an all too sombre warning that being self-righteous is not the same as being right. As connoisseurs of the judicial joke will already know, there is a difference between lawyers and God. God, at least, doesn’t think He’s a lawyer.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherHarperCollins
  • Publication date2005
  • ISBN 10 0007111215
  • ISBN 13 9780007111213
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages336
  • Rating
Buy Used
Condition: Very Good
The book has been read, but is... Learn more about this copy

Shipping: £ 4.80
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.

Destination, rates & speeds

Add to Basket

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780375505508: The Trial: A History, From Socrates To O. J. Simpson

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780375505508
Publisher: Random House Inc, 2005
Hardcover

  • 9780007111220: The Trial: A History from Socrates to O. J. Simpson

    Harper..., 2006
    Softcover

  • 9780375757037: The Trial: A History, From Socrates to O.J. Simpson

    Random..., 2006
    Softcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Kadri, Sadakat
Published by Harper Collins Publishers (1708)
ISBN 10: 0007111215 ISBN 13: 9780007111213
Used Hardcover Quantity: 2
Seller:
WorldofBooks
(Goring-By-Sea, WS, United Kingdom)

Book Description Hardback. Condition: Very Good. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR004130145

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
£ 1.30
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 4.80
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Kadri, Sadakat
Published by Harper Collins Publishers (1708)
ISBN 10: 0007111215 ISBN 13: 9780007111213
Used Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
WorldofBooks
(Goring-By-Sea, WS, United Kingdom)

Book Description Hardback. Condition: Good. The book has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine. Seller Inventory # GOR002227788

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
£ 1.30
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 4.80
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Seller Image

Kadri, Sadakat
Published by HarperCollins (1708)
ISBN 10: 0007111215 ISBN 13: 9780007111213
Used Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
WeBuyBooks
(Rossendale, LANCS, United Kingdom)

Book Description Condition: Good. Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. Ex library copy with usual stamps & stickers. Seller Inventory # wbs5079247416

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
£ 0.99
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 8
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Seller Image

Kadri, Sadakat
Published by HarperCollins (1708)
ISBN 10: 0007111215 ISBN 13: 9780007111213
Used Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
WeBuyBooks 2
(Rossendale, LANCS, United Kingdom)

Book Description Condition: Good. Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. A copy that has been read but remains in clean condition. All of the pages are intact and the cover is intact and the spine may show signs of wear. The book may have minor markings which are not specifically mentioned. A tan to the pages. Seller Inventory # wbs5109114538

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
£ 0.99
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 8
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Kadri, Sadakat
ISBN 10: 0007111215 ISBN 13: 9780007111213
Used Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Better World Books Ltd
(Dunfermline, United Kingdom)

Book Description Condition: Good. Ships from the UK. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages. Seller Inventory # 6651050-6

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
£ 3.42
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 8
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Sadakat Kadri
Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd (2005)
ISBN 10: 0007111215 ISBN 13: 9780007111213
Used Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Greener Books
(London, United Kingdom)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Used; Good. **SHIPPED FROM UK** We believe you will be completely satisfied with our quick and reliable service. All orders are dispatched as swiftly as possible! Buy with confidence! Greener Books. Seller Inventory # mon0001568781

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
£ 3.68
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 9.99
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Kadri, Sadakat
Published by HarperCollins (2005)
ISBN 10: 0007111215 ISBN 13: 9780007111213
Used Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
The Guru Bookshop
(Hereford, United Kingdom)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. FIRST EDITION with dust jacket - rare and collectable - will send out 1 st class post within 12 hours of receipt of order. Seller Inventory # mon0000120222

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
£ 7
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 12
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Kadri, Sadakat
Published by HarperCollins (2005)
ISBN 10: 0007111215 ISBN 13: 9780007111213
Used Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
SN Books Ltd
(Thetford, United Kingdom)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good. Orders shipped daily from the UK. Professional seller. Seller Inventory # mon0000358078

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy Used
£ 3.80
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: £ 40
From United Kingdom to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds