Preface to the Second Edition

What is a political trial? Can a political trial strengthen the rule of law? How do certain trials reflect and change the nature of both politics and law? I have asked these and other similar questions of students in my jurisprudence class for over two decades.

Since the mid-1980s when this book was written, a number of notable political trials have raised critical questions for society. Shocking public exposures about the Guildford 4 and Maguire 7 trials led to questions that shook the British criminal justice system, while in the United States the trials concerning the beating of Rodney King led up to the O. J. Simpson spectacle and a host questions parallel to what the British faced. Terrorists such as Paul Hill, found guilty of murdering an abortion doctor, and Timothy McVeigh, convicted of bombing the Oklahoma City federal building, raise the same questions as the case of the left-wing dissenter Karl Armstrong did in the 1970s. Finally, South Africa’s transition from an apartheid regime to democracy raises basic questions about whether a nation can not only remember but grant amnesty and achieve reconciliation. This edition will consider these cases.

Other cases, because of space, will not be considered here. The trials of John Demjanjuk, Paul Touvier, and Maurice Papon have raised the issues of the Holocaust and questions about collaboration; Oliver North’s trial caused us to ask about the issues of loyalty during the Cold War; the trials of Erich Honecker and Markus Wolf opened up similar Cold War questions in East Germany. These trials, while important, will not be considered in this second edition. Likewise, the war crimes tribunals at the Hague concerning genocide in the former Yugoslavia and the tribunals created to deal with Rwandan genocide, while raising some of the most fundamental questions, have not at the time of this writing completed enough work to be part of this second edition.

Nevertheless, a trial from fifty years ago will be examined. The trial of Norway’s Nobel Prize winning author, Knut Hamsun, presents a classic example of a nationalist accused of betraying his nation.

Four people must be thanked for their work on this second edition: Karen Stuppi of Transaction Publishers for overseeing the editorial tasks; Andrew Kay for his computer work; my daughter Abigail for her perseverance and the countless hours in putting the text right; and my wife Kathryn for her resolute devotion at all stages of the work.

Ron Christenson