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Prosopography, History and Legal Anthropology: Two Comments on the Belgian Case

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Modernisation of the Criminal Justice Chain and the Judicial System

Part of the book series: Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice ((IUSGENT,volume 50))

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Abstract

Prosopographical databases are of major interest for research work. As resources enabling a significant saving of time, they provide undeniable value to the conclusions put forward in the analysis, which are far more reliable than those drawn from a classic manual examination and interpretation of sources. Lastly, the material and human means necessary to achieve such databases have to be dealt with (J.C.Farcy).The common denominator in the three different types of government in these case studies—annexation, colonialism, occupation—is foreign rule: Belgium under French and German rule, and King Leopold and Belgium as foreign rulers of Congo. The perspective of purity and contamination, in connection with (evolutionary) group dynamics provides an essential background for assessing the sociological and symbolic importance of the judiciary in a constellation of foreign rule (D.Venema).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Quelle approche prosopographique?” http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/59/00/81/PDF/prosopographie_Lemercier_Picard.pdf.

  2. 2.

    J.-P. Royer, R. Martinage and P. Lecocq, Juges et notables au XIXe siècle, Paris, PUF, 1982, p. 8.

  3. 3.

    V. Bernaudeau, La justice en question. Histoire de la magistrature angevine au XIXe siècle, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2007, 349 p.

  4. 4.

    S. Defois, Les avocats nantais au XXe siècle. Socio-histoire d’une profession, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2007, 397 p.

  5. 5.

    Available at http://tristan.u-bourgogne.fr:8080/.

  6. 6.

    Published first by the periodical La France judiciaire then by the Association amicale de la magistrature and, for the most recent, by the Ministry of Justice.

  7. 7.

    B. Garnot, Histoire des juges en France de l’Ancien régime à nos jours, Paris, Nouveau monde éditions, 2014, 396 p.

  8. 8.

    It is at this level that the flexibility of relational databases, allowing the restructuring of data along the way, the addition of tables, etc., is the most significantly appreciated.

  9. 9.

    “Les carrières des magistrats (XIXe-XXe siècles), Annuaire rétrospectif de la magistrature”, Dijon, Centre Georges Chevrier, June 2009, 211 p. This is an unpublished report; only the study of the examining judge was included in a book, co-authored with J.-J. Clère, devoted to the history of the examining judge (J.-J. Clère and J.-C. Farcy (dir.), Le Juge d’instruction. Approches historiques, Dijon, Editions Universitaires de Dijon, 2010, 320 p).

  10. 10.

    “Quelques données statistiques sur la magistrature coloniale”, Clio@Thémis, no. 4, http://www.cliothemis.com/Quelques-donnees-statistiques-sur.

  11. 11.

    After the “Annuaire rétrospectif de la magistrature XIXe-XXe siècles”, we have continued with the prosopographical method (combining research instruments and relatively poor information) with the study of the victims of political repression during the working-class insurgency in June 1848 and just after the putsch of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in December 1851. See the online databases on the website of Flora Tristan from the Université de Bourgogne (http://tristan.u-bourgogne.fr/CGC/prodscientifique/bases_donnees.html). Work of the same nature on the Communards is ongoing.

  12. 12.

    Z. Mach, Symbols, Conflict, and Identity. Essays in Political Anthropology, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1993, p. 7.

  13. 13.

    K. Brüggenmann, “Foreign Rule and Collaboration in the Baltic Countries, 1860–1920. New Directions in Research”, in Journal of Baltic Studies 2006, 37:2, pp. 155–162, at 155.

  14. 14.

    C.J. Lammers, Vreemde overheersing. Bezetten en bezetting in sociologisch perspectief, Amsterdam, Bert Bakker, 2005, pp. 11–20. Apparently, this threat of violence is meant as a stronger form of the threat of sanctions used by any government to ensure obedience to the law.

  15. 15.

    M. Conway and P. Romijn, The War for Legitimacy in Politics and Culture 1936–1946, Oxford, Berg, 2008, pp. 1–4. Cf. N. Luhmann, Legitimation durch Verfahren, Neuwied am Rhein, Luchterhand, 1969 and Lammers Vreemde overheersing, p. 323.

  16. 16.

    C.J. Lammers, “Occupation Regimes Alike and Unlike: British, Dutch and French Patterns of Inter-Organisational Control of Foreign Territories”, in Organisation Studies, 2003, 24(9), pp. 1379–1403.

  17. 17.

    M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Tübingen, Mohr, 1922, p. 124 & Teil 1, Kapitel 3.

  18. 18.

    M. Hechter, “Alien Rule and Its Discontents’, American Behavioral Scientist (53) 2009-3, pp. 289–310, at 298; Lammers, Vreemde overheersing, p. 66; Conway & Romijn, The War for Legitimacy, pp. 8–11.

  19. 19.

    On this process of continuous change: D. Day, Conquest. How Societies Overwhelm Others, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008, Introduction.

  20. 20.

    L. Tivey, “Introduction”, in: L. Tivey (ed.), The Nation State, Oxford, Martin Robertson, 1981, pp. 1–12; cf. Mach, Symbols, Conflict, and Identity, pp. 102–103.

  21. 21.

    Article 1, Sect. 2 of the United Nations Charter 1945; Article 1, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966.

  22. 22.

    E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Oxford, Blackwell, 1983, p. 1; cf. Mach, Symbols, Conflict, and Identity, pp. 102–103.

  23. 23.

    Th. Oudemans & A. Lardinois, Tragic Ambiguity. Anthropology, Philosophy and Sophocles’ Antigone, Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1987, p. 28; Cf. M. Douglas, “Introduction to Grid/Group Analysis”, in M. Douglas (ed.), Essays in the Sociology of Perception, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, pp. 1–8, at 1.

  24. 24.

    Oudemans and Lardinois, Tragic Ambiguity, p. 1.

  25. 25.

    R. Brown, Group Processes. Dynamics within and between groups, Second Edition, Malden, Blackwell Publisheres, 2000, pp. 132–133, with references to the work of Leon Festinger.

  26. 26.

    D. Venema, “Transitional Shortcuts to Justice and National Identity”, in Ratio Juris (24), 2011-1, pp. 88–108, at 93–94, 96–98; Mach, Symbols, Conflict, and Identity, Chap. 1.

  27. 27.

    Mach, Symbols, Conflict, and Identity, pp. 7, 103.

  28. 28.

    Chapter 4 of Lawrence Rosen’s Law as Culture. An Invitation, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006, makes this explicit in its title: ‘Law as Cosmology.’ See also R. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 1979, 22–27, 298–299; cf. Mach, Symbols, Conflict, and Identity, Chap. 3 (esp. p. 163), p. 266.

  29. 29.

    C. Schmitt, Der Begriff des Politischen, Berlin, Duncker and Humblot, 2002 (1st ed. 1932); Cf. C. Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, London, Verso, 2000, Chap. 2; Chantal Mouffe, On the Political, London, Routledge, 2005, pp. 24–25; 119–120.

  30. 30.

    Oudemans and Lardinois, Tragic Ambiguity, p. 52.

  31. 31.

    Key texts are M. Douglas, Purity and Danger. An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, London, ARK Paperbacks, 1984 [1966]; P. Ricoeur, “La Symbolique du mal, in Finitude et culpabilité, Paris, Aubier, 1960; Oudemans and Lardinois, Tragic Ambiguity, esp. Sec. 3.1, Chap. 4 and Sect. 8.2.

  32. 32.

    Douglas, Purity and Danger, pp. 39–40, 128, 138.

  33. 33.

    Douglas, Purity and Danger, Chap. 6, esp. p. 99, 113; Ricoeur, La Symbolique du mal, esp. the first chapter.

  34. 34.

    D. Venema, Rechters in oorlogstijd. De confrontatie van de Nederlandse rechterlijke macht met nationaal-socialisme en bezetting, Den Haag: Boom Juridische uitgevers 2007, pp. 163–164, 174–175; Venema, “The Judge, the Occupier”, p. 223.

  35. 35.

    M. Walzer, “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands”, in Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 2 Winter, 1973, pp. 160–180.

  36. 36.

    Cf. M. Ignatieff, The Lesser Evil, Political Ethics in an Age of Terror, Princeton University Press, 2005.

  37. 37.

    Conway & Romijn, The War for Legitimacy, p, 77; See also, for example: Mark van den Wijngaert a.o., België tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog, Antwerpen, Standaard Uitgeverij, chap. 2, titled: ‘Bestuur en politiek. Het minste kwaad’ (‘Administration and politics. The lesser evil’).

  38. 38.

    Cf. Oudemans and Lardinois, Tragic Ambiguity, pp. 52–53.

  39. 39.

    P. Romijn, “Ambitions and dilemmas of local authorities in the German-occupied Netherlands, 1940–1945”, in  H. van Goethem, B. De Wever en N. Wouters (eds.) Local Government in Occupied Europe, Antwerp, University Press, 2006, pp. 33–66; D. Venema, “The Judge, the Occupier, his Laws, and their Validity: Judicial Review by the Supreme Courts of Occupied Belgium, Norway, and the Netherlands 1940–1945 in the Context of their Professional Conduct and the Consequences for their Public Image”, in M. de Koster and D. Heirbaut (Eds.), Justice in Wartime and Revolutions, Europe, 1795–1950, Brussels, Algemeen Rijksarchief, 2012, pp. 203–223. Cf. Lammers, ‘Occupation Regimes Alike and Unlike’, p. 1383. See also: J. Elster, Closing the Books, Transitional Justice in Historical Perspective, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 144–150.

  40. 40.

    Mach, Symbols, Conflict, and Identity, pp. 107–109.

  41. 41.

    Venema, “The Judge, the Occupier”.

  42. 42.

    Conway & Romijn, The War for Legitimacy, p. 77.

  43. 43.

    M. Douglas, Natural Symbols, London: Barrie and Rockliff: The Cresset Press 1970; M. Douglas, Cultural Bias, London, Royal Anthropological Institute, 1978 (reprinted in M. Douglas, In the Active Voice, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982); J.J. Spickard, “A Guide to Mary Douglas's Three Versions of Grid/Group Theory”, in Sociological Analysis (50), 1989-2, pp. 151–170.

  44. 44.

    W.D. Hamilton, “The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior” (I & II), Journal of Theoretical Biology (7) 1964-1, pp. 1–16, 17–52; R.L. Trivers, “The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism”, in Quarterly Review of Biology, 1971, 35–57; A. Olsson, J.P. Ebert, M.R. Banaji, & E.A. Phelps, “The role of social groups in the persistence of learned fear”, in  Science, 2005-309, 785–787.

  45. 45.

    Brown, Group Processes, Chap. 8, linking anthropological concepts around identity preservation with evolutionary explanations.

  46. 46.

    Cf. D.S. Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral. Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2003, esp. pp. 20–37.

  47. 47.

    H.E. Hale, “Explaining Ethnicity”, in Comparative Political Studies, (37) 2004-4, pp. 458–485.

  48. 48.

    See, for example, Van Vugt, M., & Kameda, T. “Evolution and groups”, in J.M. Levine (Ed.), Group processes, New York, Psychology Press, 2012.

  49. 49.

    Cf. Venema, “The Judge, the Occupier”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS Retired Researcher, Grenoble, France

    Jean-Claude Farcy

  2. Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Derk Venema

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  1. Jean-Claude Farcy
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Correspondence to Jean-Claude Farcy .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. KU Leuven Public Governance Institute, Leuven, Belgium

    Annie Hondeghem

  2. Centre d'histoire du droit et de la justice (CHDJ), Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

    Xavier Rousseaux

  3. Centre de Recherche et d’Interventions Sociologiques (CRIS), University of Liège, Liège, Belgium

    Fréderic Schoenaers

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Farcy, JC., Venema, D. (2016). Prosopography, History and Legal Anthropology: Two Comments on the Belgian Case. In: Hondeghem, A., Rousseaux, X., Schoenaers, F. (eds) Modernisation of the Criminal Justice Chain and the Judicial System. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 50. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25802-7_17

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