Meierhenrich, Jens 
ORCID: 0000-0002-2165-3268
(2024)
The violence of law: the formation and deformation of Gacaca courts in Rwanda.
Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 9781108425391
Abstract
'Lawfare' describes the systematic use and abuse of legal procedure for political ends. This provocative book examines this insufficiently understood form of warfare in post-genocide Rwanda, where it contributed to the making of dictatorship. Jens Meierhenrich provides a redescription of Rwanda's daring experiment in transitional justice known as inkiko gacaca. By dissecting the temporally and structurally embedded mechanisms and processes by which change agents in post-genocide Rwanda manoeuvred to create modified legal arrangements of things past, Meierhenrich reveals an unexpected jurisprudence of violence. Combining nomothetic and ideographic reasoning, he shows that the deformation of the gacaca courts -and thus the rise of lawfare in post-genocide Rwanda -was not preordained but the outcome of a violently structured contingency. The Violence of Law tells a disturbing tale and will appeal to scholars, advanced students, and practitioners of international and comparative law, African studies and human rights. • Subverts conventional wisdom about the case of post-genocide Rwanda by illuminating the dark sides of transitional justice with a longitudinal study of a frequently misunderstood case • Sheds light on 'lawfare' -a disturbing phenomenon of global concern • Traces and historicizes practices of lawfare through visual ethnography and other forms of interpretive inquiry in order to advance the longstanding, fragmented debate over the violence of law in the social sciences and humanities.
| Item Type: | Book |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author |
| Divisions: | International Relations |
| Subjects: | K Law H Social Sciences J Political Science |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Aug 2025 10:36 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Aug 2025 16:03 |
| URI: | http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/128989 |
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