Supreme histories and brittle democracies: Courts, law, and contested regimes of historicity.
In the introduction to this special issue, we explore the role of courts in the production of competing regimes of historicity and examine what political formations and social contestations are generated in the process. Drawing on theoretical debates in anthropology, socio-legal studies and history,...
| Published in: | History & Anthropology Vol. 36; no. 5; pp. 801 - 817 |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Dec2025
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=189474895&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 189474895 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 02757206 7VZ jtl: History & Anthropology issn: 02757206 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2025 vid: 36 iid: 5 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 189474895 10.1080/02757206.2025.2562805 ppf: 801 ppct: 16 formats: tig: atl: Supreme histories and brittle democracies: Courts, law, and contested regimes of historicity. aug: au: Fuchs, Sandhya Kelly, Tobias affil: School of Social Policy, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland su: Historicity Legal history Historical sociology Judicial process Pressure groups sug: subj: Historicity Legal history Historical sociology Judicial process Pressure groups keyword: authoritarianism courts democracy law Regimes of historicity temporality ab: In the introduction to this special issue, we explore the role of courts in the production of competing regimes of historicity and examine what political formations and social contestations are generated in the process. Drawing on theoretical debates in anthropology, socio-legal studies and history, we analyse how the unique spacetime of liberal law obscures the historical contingency of legal processes and judgements. We propose that the perceived a-historicity of the liberal legal form can render courts privileged sites for the pursuit of rival claims to political sovereignty. By embedding their historical interpretations within legal rules and procedures, states and political interest groups can make powerful claims about who legitimately belongs to a nation, and whose historical narrations should be validated as true. We analyse historicity as a fundamentally political concept that illuminates how the histories of nations and peoples are reproduced and contested in courtrooms as part of conflicting bids for political supremacy. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2025 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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