docket and drawering

Via The Vault, we discover that the US Library of Congress is curating a collection of nearly five decades of courtroom drama as recorded by various sketch-artists, who laboured to capture the emotion and anguish of attorneys, juries, judges, defendants and plaintiffs.
Though all US jurisdictions have permitted still-photography since 2014, cameras have been traditionally banned from the courtroom in order to protect the privacy of parties and prevent distraction and I wonder how relevant that this tradition and talent might be in a future when everyone is accustomed to posing for posterity at all times and in all places. This extensive exhibition began with the donation of illustrator Howard Brodie who captured the proceedings of the 1964 trial of Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who killed Lee Harvey Oswald while in police custody charged with the assassination of John F Kennedy.

umwelt-bibliothek

The White House’s systematic approach to censor and compartmentalise narratives that run counter to its message in removing websites and historical records are of course not without precedent and symmetrical responses to ensure that that data might live on, but it was particularly striking that there was a meeting space reserved for the resistance in East Germany that was also the repository of verboten knowledge—specifically of an environmental nature.
The pastor of East Berlin’s Zion church donated a suite of basement rooms from 1986 on to activists and organisers that became known as the Umwelt-Bibliothek, the Environment Library. Accruing more oppositional forces and eventually becoming the only free press outlet in the country, the environmental roots were important ones as documentation on safety studies of chemicals and impact-assessments of this heavily industrialised nation became suddenly inaccessible and the public were kept in the dark about very grave and immediate risks that production posed—not only to workers but also to those who lived in the footprint of factories. Despite repeated raids and operating in a police-state with mass-surveillance, the organisation survived East Germany, folding in 1998, but the archives as well as their newsletter is still maintained.

separate and unequal

Prior to the series of Lincoln-Douglas senatorial debates whose interlocutors of course became the presidents of the United States and the Confederate States of America respectively, the notion of interracial relations—socially and contractually, was referred to as amalgamation. Democratic party pundits, ahead of the election, tried to convince the voting-public that Lincoln and his Republican party were strong proponents of the mingling of black and white society and progressive integration was a dangerous and unwelcome thing, but were less than wholly successful in their campaign with Lincoln winning but the nation divided in civil war, beginning in April of 1861 just a month after his inauguration.
The message was that being anti-slavery automatically equalled surrendering one’s job to emancipated slaves, but because the Democrat’s ploy fell short of defeating Lincoln the first time (despite the ensuing bloody conflict, divided families), they redoubled their efforts to bring down the president and the supporters of the Union for second term. A sympathetic, anonymous provocateur published a propaganda pamphlet that took the notion of amalgamation and nuanced it as a more threatening and insidious concept called miscegenation—a bit of dog-Latin for to mix miscere and kind, genus—suggesting that not only was to vote Republican potentially a way to jeopardise one’s own financial standing and security, furthermore such political-leanings exact an ever higher commitment. Though perhaps the subtext that race is a fiction is a good and positive thing, surrogates attempted to frighten voters by proffering that miscegenationists—Lincoln and his party, not only felt that the mingling of the races is permissible but should be mandated, intimating that a hapless voter would see his daughter betrothed to a black man, the party believing that evolutionary progress (also a contemporaneous idea) might only be achieved by the off-spring of intermarriage. This facetious exposition was responsible for informing the destructive ideas of eugenics that we are familiar with and entrenched resistance to accepting relationships that look different from our own.

bedfellows or now let’s get to work

With rather alarming alacrity, Prime Minister May visited the Queen on Friday afternoon following the General Election once all jurisdictions had declared—foreboding of what looked to be a hung Parliament—to propose to form a government, whose composition looked to be a less preferable and less tenable option than prolonged anarchy or even relinquishing rule to Her Majesty herself. Her ministerial role propped up by the tacit backing of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland. This socially conservative group that has in the past supported paramilitary forces and stoked sectarian violence, in exchange for being the junior member of a technically workable, minority coalition which gives the Conservatives in total a few more seats than it had prior to the vote, but it’s hard to argue that was calculated, will certainty expect some cabinet appointments and some policy concessions for its support.

strong and stable or disunited kingdom

Castle Mayskull’s gamble backfired with her calling an ill-advised snap, general election in order to reinforce a mandate that her party had already secured to withdraw the UK from the European Union and discourage future referenda on devolution and secession.
The Conservative Party has lost a few seats in Parliament’s House of Commons which brings the critical number to retain an absolute majority. Rebuffing calls to resign as Prime Minister—having squandered her mandate, should the incumbent insist on staying and no coalition can be brought together to support her, she risks precipitating a constitutional crisis and dissolution of government. So called hung Parliaments have occurred in the past but with the political landscape being in such turmoil and congregations so polarised over it seems unlikely that an alliance will be forthcoming and the days to follow will be anything but tidy.  This miscalculation, which drew younger voters in greater than expected numbers to the ballot, threatens to reverse the course of negotiations for a Brexit deal and possibly the decision to leave in the first place and is already boding greater economic disruptions than experienced after the referendum. 

l’honneur de dieu

There were quite a few choice moments during the public testimony of the former FBI director at his congressional hearing, but we really appreciated him dropping a bit of received arch-dialogue extracted from medieval intrigues—specifically, the December 1170 assassination of Archbishop Thomas à Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.
The context of the quotation comes when the director was pressed whether he understood the hortatory ambiguity of Dear Leader as an order, to which the former director replied, “Yes, yes. It rings in my ears as kind of ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’” N'y aura-t-il personne pour me débarrasser de ce prêtre turbulent? Though his questioner was insinuating otherwise, once Henry II uttered those words four of his knights interpreted it as a degree and death-warrant and carried out the execution. Henry II was no tyrant exactly but king and bishop were often at odds—especially over the jurisdiction of religious and secular courts of law, the former favoured by the criminally-inclined because of lighter sentences and absolution. The ecclesiastic courts were reserved for the ordained and it wasn’t a matter of royal prerogative who would stand trial where. Becket threatened the king with excommunication, and a contemporary biographer reported that Henry lamented, “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought-up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?” Becket’s martyrdom and subsequent adoration may Henry regret his words, no matter their intent.