Examines pretrial rituals of accusation that enabled colonial law and order to support possessive settler-colonialism across western Canada.

Accusing someone of committing a crime arrests everyday social relations and unfurls processes that decide on who to admit to criminal justice networks. Accusation demarcates specific subjects as the criminally accused, who then face courtroom trials, and possible punishment. It inaugurates a crime’s historical journey into being with sanctioned accusers successfully making criminal allegations against accused persons in the presence of authorized juridical agents. Given this decisive role in the production of criminal identities, it is surprising that criminal accusation has received relatively short shrift in sociological, socio-legal and criminological discourses. In this book, George Pavlich redresses this oversight by framing a socio-legal field directed to political rationales and practices of criminal accusation. The focus of its interrogation is the truth-telling powers of an accusatory lore that creates subjects within the confines of socially authorized spaces. And, in this respect, the book has two overarching aims in mind. First, it names and analyses powers of criminal accusation – its history, rationales, rites and effects – as an enduring gateway to criminal justice. Second, the book evaluates the prospects for limiting and/or changing apparatuses of criminal accusation. By understanding their powers, might it be possible to decrease the number who enter criminal justice’s gates? This question opens debate on the subject of the book’s final section: the prospects for more inclusive accusative grammars that do not, as a reflex, turn to exclusionary visions of crime and vengeful, segregated, corrective or risk-orientated punishment. Highlighting how expansive criminal justice systems are populated by accusatorial powers, and how it might be possible to recalibrate the lore that feeds them, this ground-breaking analysis will be of considerable interest to scholars working in socio-legal research studies, critical criminology, social theory, postcolonial studies and critical legal theory.

The punitive effects of accusations that lead to criminalization have received considerable attention. Less well documented is the actual role, process, and meaning of accusation per se. This collection of essays sets out the terms of a new debate about a largely overlooked but foundational dimension of criminalizing justice; namely, accusation. Criminal accusation, however, does more than define the outer borders of criminal justice institutions. It is directly implicated in providing a steady flow of potential criminals who are fed into expanding criminal justice arenas. Despite the basic politics through which legal persons are selected to face possible criminalization, there are few analyses directed at how accusation works in theoretical, historical, criminological, social, cultural, and procedural realms. By highlighting the constitutive role of criminal accusation on individuals, the judicial system, and society as a whole, this book establishes an important new field of inquiry.

How do societies decide whom to criminalize? What does it mean to accuse someone of being an offender? Entryways to Criminal Justice analyzes the thresholds that distinguish law-abiding individuals from those who may be criminalized. Contributors to the volume adopt social, historical, cultural, and political perspectives to explore the accusatory process that place persons in contact with the law. Emphasizing the gateways to criminal justice, truth-telling, and overcriminalization, the authors provide important insights into often overlooked practices that admit persons to criminal justice. It is essential reading for scholars, students, and policy makers in the fields of socio-legal studies, sociology, criminology, law and society, and post/colonial studies. Contributors: Dale A. Ballucci, Martin A. French, Aaron Henry, Bryan R. Hogeveen, Dawn Moore, George Pavlich, Marcus A. Sibley, Rashmee Singh, Amy Swiffen, Matthew P. Unger, Elise Wohlbold, Andrew Woolford

This book examines how the functioning of the International Criminal Court has become a forum of convergence between the common law and civil law criminal justice systems. Four countries were selected as primary examples of these two legal traditions: the United States, England and Wales, Germany and Poland. The first layer of analysis focuses on selected elements of the model of accusation that are crucial to the model adopted by the ICC. These are: development of the notion of the prosecutor’s independence in view of their ties to the countries and the Security Council; the nature and limits of the prosecutor’s discretional powers to initiate proceedings before the ICC; the reasons behind the prosecutor’s choice of both defendants and charges; the role the prosecutor plays in the procedure of disclosure of evidence and consensual termination of proceedings; and the determinants of the model of accusation used during trial and appeal proceedings. The second layer of the book consists in an analysis of the motives behind applying particular solutions to create the model of accusation before the ICC. It also shows how the model of accusation gradually evolved in proceedings before the military and ad hoc tribunals: ICTY and ICTR. Moreover, the question of compatibility of procedural institutions is addressed: In what ways does adopting a certain element of criminal procedure, e.g. discretional powers of the prosecutor to initiate criminal proceedings, influence the remaining procedural elements, e.g. the existence of the dossier of a case or the powers of a judge to change the legal classification of the criminal behavior appearing in the indictment?

This special issue is part one of a two-part edited collection on interrupting the legal person, and what this means. The chapters in this volume interrogate the role of the person and personhood in different contexts, jurisdictions, and legal traditions.

This book examines the historical, cultural and political dimensions of the crisis in Bosnia and the international efforts to resolve it. It provides a detailed analysis of international proposals to end the fighting, from the Vance-Owen plan to the Dayton Accord, with special attention to the national and international politics that shaped them. It analyzes the motivations and actions of the warring parties, neighbouring states and international actors including the United States, the United Nations, the European powers, and others involved in the war and the diplomacy surrounding it. With guides to sources and documentation, abundant tabular data and over 30 maps, this should be a definitive volume on the most vexing conflict of the post-Soviet period.