"In a book at once compassionate, nuanced, and tough-minded, Martha Minow brings together in an illuminating conjunction a set of issues that at first glance seem to have nothing whatever in common: horrific crimes committed by child soldiers, corporate and student debt, and presidential pardons for unrepentant criminals. All of these, as Minow brilliantly shows, raise the same pressing and contentious question: For what offenses and under what conditions should a just legal system offer forgiveness? This is a legal minefield through which When Should Law Forgive? provides an indispensable guide."
"No one but Martha Minow could have written this brilliant, and brilliantly readable, meditation on the role of forgiveness in the law and of the law in forgiveness… [showing how] to move forward and rebuild while both remembering the past and getting past it."
"Martha Minow’s work on how societies can recover from large-scale tragedies and human-rights violations has been transformational.… Her insights are smart, thoughtful, and rooted in a deep, nuanced understanding of what justice sometimes demands."
"[When Should Law Forgive?] will help readers understand the thorny complexities of forgiveness under law."
"In a world of noise and confusion, animated by vengeance, Martha Minow is a voice of moral clarity: a lawyer arguing for forgiveness, a scholar arguing for evidence, a person arguing for compassion."
"In this time, so shaped by reactionary and ‘call-out’ cultures that foster harsh, virtue-signaling condemnation of others, this brilliant book carries a profound reminder: for a diverse society to cohere as a humane society, it has to have the capacity—rooted in law—to forgive and reconcile. This book’s inspiring discussion of how the law can do this is a beacon to that more humane society."
2019-08-07
A Harvard Law School professor examines when it is appropriate for the law, that instrument of punishment, to show mercy through forgiving misdeeds.
The law in this country, writes Minow (In Brown's Wake: Legacies of America's Educational Landmark, 2010, etc.), is already inclined to forgive legal misbehavior in the matter of debt, allowing for bankruptcy proceedings in the place of erstwhile debtors' prisons. That there is stigma attached and that those who go through the process may find their credit ruined for years does nothing to diminish the fact that those with legitimate claims against the debtor are forced into a system that may pay them pennies on the dollar. Thus, while's there no reason to take joy in bankruptcy, at least it's a possibility that all parties settle on. Things are different when it comes to murder, individual or mass, as with the genocidal killings in parts of Africa a generation ago, when Archbishop Desmond Tutu and other leaders organized campaigns that forgave while not forgetting. Minow examines when it is appropriate for legal institutions to press for forgiveness rather than punishment. For example, what of the case of child soldiers, kidnapped and pressed into service in terrible campaigns in conflicts throughout the world? "To ask how law may forgive is not to deny the fact of wrongdoing," writes the author of this and other problems. "Rather, it is to widen the lens to enable glimpses of these larger patterns and to work for new choices that can be enabled by wiping the slate clean." Throughout, Minow writes evenhandedly. She observes that in the instance of presidential pardons, one vehicle for forgiveness, it all hinges on lack of corruption—lack that could not be demonstrated in the instance of Donald Trump's pardon of disgraced Arizona lawman Joe Arpaio, nor by Bill Clinton's pardon of big-ticket donor Marc Rich. Forgiveness works, Minow holds, but only when it is clean, unforced, and willingly extended.
A solid, accessible contribution to the literature of restorative justice.
