Mapping maleficia: The borders of witchcraft and a woman’s world through the with trials of Zug, Switzerland, 1737-1738

This thesis argues that the witch trial of Zug, Switzerland, held between August of 1737 and January of 1738 provides a window into the world and spatial conceptualizations of lower status Catholic women living in eighteenth-century Switzerland. Through the examination of the accounts of the accused, the realities and fantasies held by these women are laid bare in the narratives of witchcraft they constructed, informing their interactions with the world around them. The marginal spaces of the Canton of Zug and the broader Swiss context were the backdrop to localized and broader diabolical concepts of witchcraft. Geographic information systems (GIS) databases and maps of the accused’s worlds as demonstrated through the trial record were created, allowing for the visualization of the records. These maps demonstrate that the boundaries of these women’s worlds were intrinsically tied to their regional Catholic identities, forming the basis of their interactions with the world around them.

Thrown to the Wolves?

Chapter 3 takes the corruption case to the primary court level. The aim was to convict Crawford’s chief agent, Hanmantrao, of corruption. Then, based on that trial record and evidence still being gathered, the government planned to go after Crawford, the big fish. The narrative follows events of the trial and reasoning that supported the verdict. The verdict is important because the local savvy behind the rationale for the verdict is in stark contrast to the way of decision making at higher levels of government.

Frida Vigdorova’s Transcript of Joseph Brodsky’s Trial: Myths and Reality

The article analyzes the dramatic events surrounding Joseph Brodsky’s trial in Leningrad 1964, focusing on Frida Vigdorova’s transcript of the trial record. Some of these events are not fully known in Russia, and many are either totally unknown or misunderstood in the West. The transcript Vigdorova recorded played a central role in the post-trial collective protests by Soviet intelligentsia, protests unprecedented in the post-Stalin era. It became one of the very first human-rights documents in the ussr and a key contribution to samizdat. The article also treats the Soviet authorities’ persecution of young representatives of the literary intelligentsia, and it highlights Vigdorova’s successful efforts to intercede for several of those individuals before the emergence of the Brodsky case.

The Special Court for Sierra Leone, Child Soldiers, and Forced Marriage: Providing Clarity or Confusion?

SummaryThis article considers the first two trial, and corresponding first two appeal, judgments issued by the Special Court for Sierra Leone in what are commonly referred to as the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and Civil Defence Forces (CDF) cases. These judgments are noteworthy for having been the first to adjudicate at the international level the war crime of conscription or enlistment of children under the age of fifteen or using them to participate actively in hostilities and the gender-based crime against humanity of forced marriage. Beginning with the issue of child soldiers, this article explores how the Special Court addressed the applicable elements of crime, the abduction of children, the role of initiation within the act of conscription or enlistment of child soldiers, and the definition of use of children to participate actively in hostilities. The second part of this article discusses how the AFRC judgments addressed the crime against humanity of forced marriage. In comparison, the CDF Trial Chamber avoided consideration of this crime, and the Appeals Chamber’s partial criticism of this approach could not correct the negative silence created within the Special Court’s record of gender-based atrocities by the CDF. The article concludes that the AFRC and CDF judgments raise issues that require further consideration. For example, what is the legal linkage between abductions and child soldier recruitment, and how does one distinguish between active and non-active participation of children under fifteen in hostilities? These judgments also point to the dangers involved in misunderstanding a gender-based crime such as forced marriage solely as a crime of a sexual nature, and the way in which a trial record can be irrevocably altered by the unbalanced exclusion of gender-based crimes.