When Should Law Forgive?

by Martha Minow

Overview

“Martha Minow is a voice of moral clarity: a lawyer arguing for forgiveness, a scholar arguing for evidence, a person arguing for compassion.” —Jill Lepore, author of These Truths

In an age increasingly defined by accusation and resentment, Martha Minow makes an eloquent, deeply-researched argument in favor of strengthening the role of forgiveness in the administration of law. Through three case studies, Minow addresses such foundational issues as: Who has the right to forgive? Who should be forgiven? And under what terms?

The result is as lucid as it is compassionate: A compelling study of the mechanisms of justice by one of this country’s foremost legal experts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393531749
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/25/2020
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Martha Minow is the 300th Anniversary University Professor and former dean of Harvard Law School, where she teaches courses on constitutional law and on law and social change. She has written many influential books and articles about law and society.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Forgiving Youth 35

Chapter 2 Forgiving Debt 73

Chapter 3 Amnesties and Pardons 113

Chapter 4 Reflections 145

Acknowledgments 165

Notes 171

Index 241

Editorial Reviews

"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."— Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative

"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."— Laurence Tribe, author of To End a Presidency

"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."— Stephen Greenblatt, Pulitzer Prize winner

"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."— Claude Steele, author of Whistling Vivaldi

"Minow’s new book thoroughly explores one enduring means of conflict resolution that is far too often overlooked: forgiveness."— Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson Law360

"Minow’s compassionate, knowledgeable, and nuanced examination of the gains that may follow policies that substitute forgiveness for rigid legal remedies is groundbreaking."— Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

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.

Kirkus Reviews