[We have the following announcement. DRE]
The next Helsinki Legal History Series seminar [will be held] on October 27th! We are delighted to welcome Dr. Minna-Kerttu Kekki (University of Helsinki) to give a lecture titled: “Law and Morality in Soviet Estonian Judiciary: A philosophical analysis of a case from 1960.” Time: 3 pm – 4.30 pm. Location: Athena Sali 167. Link for online participation [here].
In this paper, I will look at a collective property embezzlement case in Soviet Estonia in the 1950s. Interesting factors in this case include the enormous amount of money allegedly embezzled by one individual, the social sympathies revealed by some of the witness statements, and the two-part court process, where the case was sent back to the same court (Tartu lower court, Rahvakohus) but to a different judge, after the state prosecutor found the (first) sentence too mild. Based on the multiple perspectives included in the case – the accused, the two judges, and many witnesses from the kolkhoz and elsewhere in the community – I will analyze the complex relation between law and morality visible in this case.Minna-Kerttu Kekki (PhD, DSocSci) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for European Studies, University of Helsinki. She is a political philosopher with a multidisciplinary background in philosophy, education, and history. Her current research topics include the political phenomenology of Edith Stein, theory (phenomenology) of collective memory, and the Soviet histories and memories of Estonians and Ingrians. In the project The Experience of Injustice: Property, Legality and Identity in Rural Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1995 (EastJustice), she focuses on Estonia, especially the area of Tartu.
