ISBN:
9780472053612
,
0472073613
,
9780472073610
Language:
English
Pages:
xii, 239 Seiten
,
Diagramme
Year of publication:
2017
Series Statement:
Law, meaning, and violence
Parallel Title:
Erscheint auch als
Keywords:
USA
;
Geschichte
;
Weltkrieg (1939-1945)
;
Judenvernichtung
;
Reparationen
;
Überlebender
;
USA
;
World War, 1939-1945 / Claims
;
Class actions (Civil procedure) / United States
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) / Reparations
;
Holocaust survivors / Legal status, laws, etc / United States
;
USA Alien tort claims act
;
Judenvernichtung
;
Überlebender
;
Reparationen
;
Geschichte
Abstract:
The Holocaust, Corporations, and the Law explores the challenge posed by the Holocaust to legal and political thought by examining the issues raised by the restitution class action suits brought against Swiss banks and German corporations before American federal courts in the 1990s. Although the suits were settled for unprecedented amounts of money, the defendants did not formally assume any legal responsibility. Thus, the lawsuits were bitterly criticized by lawyers for betraying justice and by historians for distorting history. Leora Bilsky argues class action litigation and settlement offer a mode of accountability well suited to addressing the bureaucratic nature of business involvement in atrocities. Prior to these lawsuits, legal treatment of the Holocaust was dominated by criminal law and its individualistic assumptions, consistently failing to relate to the structural aspects of Nazi crimes. Engaging critically with contemporary debates about corporate responsibility for human rights violations and assumptions about "law," she argues for the need to design processes that make multinational corporations accountable, and examines the implications for transitional justice, the relationship between law and history, and for community and representation in a post-national world. In an era when corporations are ever more powerful and international, Bilsky's arguments will attract attention beyond those interested in the Holocaust and its long shadow
Description / Table of Contents:
Introduction -- 1. Corporate accountability and collective guilt -- 2. Transnational Holocaust litigation : between international criminal law and structural reform -- 3. Rethinking settlement -- 4. Transnational litigation and the legitimacy of domestic courts -- 5. A process-oriented approach to corporate liability for human rights violations -- 6. Humanitarian payment and corporate responsibility -- 7. The judge and the historian -- 8. Commissioned corporate history -- Conclusion : transnational Holocaust litigation as a source of theorization and strategy
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