Complicity as legal responsibility

Van Rijswijk, H

Complicity as legal responsibility

Van Rijswijk, H

Permalink

Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Law and Literature, 2018, 30 (1), pp. 149 - 165
Issue Date:: 2018-01-02

Open Access

Copyright Clearance Process

Recently Added
In Progress
Open Access

This item is open access.

Adobe PDF

Download Published VersionAdobe PDF (402.2 kB)

View on publisher's site

View statistics

Full metadata record

Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Van Rijswijk, H https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9180-0078	en_US
dc.date.issued	2018-01-02	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Law and Literature, 2018, 30 (1), pp. 149 - 165	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	1535-685X	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/122240
dc.description.abstract	© 2017 by The Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. Complicity is emerging as a key cultural and critical term for understanding settler responsibility in postcolonial contexts - especially in thinking through the sense of responsibility arrived at through transitional justice processes. But what sense can we make of complicity within more pedestrian legal processes? Here, I examine an emergent narrative of complicity in “everyday law” through the framework of evaluating harms provided by the Royal Commission into Institutional Reponses to Child Sexual Abuse (“the Commission”). I analyze one case study in particular - the 19th public hearing of the Commission was held between October 22 and 31, 2014, and on November 14, 2014 (“the Bethcar Case Study”) - to provide a reading of complicity in the context of everyday legal proceedings that took place within the wider context of Australia’s postcolonial reckoning of harms suffered by the Stolen Generations. This article focuses on the role and conduct of lawyers, and of law, in the civil proceedings relating to institutional responsibility for abuse, a process at a seeming distance from the scene of original trauma. I argue that the Commission makes available a narrative of the lawyers’ role in the ongoing violence against survivors - one story and case study that, as it concerns abuse in the context of the removal of Aboriginal children, is part of wider structural violence against Aboriginal people. The Commission provides a rich source for analyzing these legal processes and provides an archive of lawyers’ responsibility that is not normally made available through law. It examines the complicity of the legal profession in harms produced by the legal system itself.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Law and Literature	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1080/1535685X.2017.1348579	en_US
dc.title	Complicity as legal responsibility	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	1	en_US
utslib.citation.volume	30	en_US
utslib.for	1801 Law	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Law
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - LRC - Law Research Centre
utslib.copyright.status	open_access
pubs.issue	1	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US
pubs.volume	30	en_US

Abstract:

© 2017 by The Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. Complicity is emerging as a key cultural and critical term for understanding settler responsibility in postcolonial contexts - especially in thinking through the sense of responsibility arrived at through transitional justice processes. But what sense can we make of complicity within more pedestrian legal processes? Here, I examine an emergent narrative of complicity in “everyday law” through the framework of evaluating harms provided by the Royal Commission into Institutional Reponses to Child Sexual Abuse (“the Commission”). I analyze one case study in particular - the 19th public hearing of the Commission was held between October 22 and 31, 2014, and on November 14, 2014 (“the Bethcar Case Study”) - to provide a reading of complicity in the context of everyday legal proceedings that took place within the wider context of Australia’s postcolonial reckoning of harms suffered by the Stolen Generations. This article focuses on the role and conduct of lawyers, and of law, in the civil proceedings relating to institutional responsibility for abuse, a process at a seeming distance from the scene of original trauma. I argue that the Commission makes available a narrative of the lawyers’ role in the ongoing violence against survivors - one story and case study that, as it concerns abuse in the context of the removal of Aboriginal children, is part of wider structural violence against Aboriginal people. The Commission provides a rich source for analyzing these legal processes and provides an archive of lawyers’ responsibility that is not normally made available through law. It examines the complicity of the legal profession in harms produced by the legal system itself.

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:

http://hdl.handle.net/10453/122240