Skip to Main Content

The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons

Online ISBN:
9781400838592
Print ISBN:
9780691070919
Publisher:
Princeton University Press
Book

The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons

Colin Dayan
Colin Dayan
Vanderbilt University
Find on
Published online:
19 October 2017
Published in print:
27 February 2011
Online ISBN:
9781400838592
Print ISBN:
9780691070919
Publisher:
Princeton University Press

Abstract

Abused dogs, prisoners tortured in Guantánamo and supermax facilities, or slaves killed by the state—all are deprived of personhood through legal acts. Such deprivations have recurred throughout history, and the law sustains these terrors and banishments even as it upholds the civil order. Examining such troubling cases, this book tackles key societal questions: How does the law construct our identities? How do its rules and sanctions make or unmake persons? And how do the supposedly rational claims of the law define marginal entities, both natural and supernatural, including ghosts, dogs, slaves, terrorist suspects, and felons? The book looks at how the law disfigures individuals and animals, and how slavery, punishment, and torture create unforeseen effects in our daily lives. Moving seamlessly across genres and disciplines, the book considers legal practices and spiritual beliefs from medieval England, the North American colonies, and the Caribbean that have survived in our legal discourse, and it explores the civil deaths of felons and slaves through lawful repression. Tracing the legacy of slavery in the United States in the structures of the contemporary American prison system and in the administrative detention of ghostly supermax facilities, the book also demonstrates how contemporary jurisprudence regarding cruel and unusual punishment prepared the way for abuses in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. Using conventional historical and legal sources to answer unconventional questions, the book illuminates stark truths about civil society's ability to marginalize, exclude, and dehumanize.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close