The Laws of Violence: Lawful Killings in Law Enforcement, Punishment, War and the War on Terror

Catalog description

States kill: law enforcement officers kill to protect innocent victims and the military kills to protect the nation. This seminar explores the constitutive relation between law and violence. Since the rise of modern statehood, sovereignty depends on the ability of a state to hold monopoly over the legitimate use of violence and thus enforce its order. But without law, bare violence is incapable of establishing order, in the absence of order there is no sovereign. Without violence law has no enforcement power, in the absence of a coercive obligation, there is no law. Enrollment limited to 20. First year students require instructor permission.