Violence of Law

Jens Meierhenrich is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He has previously taught at Harvard University. His many books include The Legacies of Law (Cambridge, 2008), which won the American Political Science Association's 2009 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award, The Remnants of the Rechtsstaat (2018), and, as co-editor, The Cambridge Companion to the Rule of Law (Cambridge, 2022).

• Part I. Introduction: 1. A justice façade; Part II. A Theoretical Framework: 2. The violence of law; Part III. The Emergence of Lawfare: 3. Bending the law; 4. Chambres specialisées: from legalism to lawfare; Part IV. The Evolution of Lawfare: 5. Varieties of Gacaca; or: the invention of tradition; 6. Violent legalization; 7. Lineages of governmentality; 8. The supply and demand of law; 9. The marketing of genocide; Part V. The Effects of Lawfare: 10. In a field of pain and death: lawfare in the countryside; 11. A cartography of silence; Part VI. Conclusion: 12. The political economy of lawfare.

'Law is violence, not always (let alone necessarily) an alternative to it, Jens Meierhenrich brilliantly documents in this long-awaited masterpiece, in the process entirely overturning congratulatory, melodramatic, and orientalist depictions of local 'justice.' A genuinely monumental work, in insight as well as in scope.' Samuel Moyn, Chancellor Kent Professor of Law and History, Yale Law School