Global Forensic Histories Workshop

A group of historians of law, medicine, and science came together for a virtual workshop in March 2021. The Global Forensic Histories Workshop was co-organized by Binyamin Blum (UC Hastings Law) and our blogger Mitra Sharafi (University of Wisconsin Law School). It was co-sponsored by UC Hastings Law, UW Law School, and the American Society for Legal History. 

Here is the line-up of papers:

Day 1 (Chair: Binyamin Blum)

• Khaled Fahmy (University of Cambridge), “Forensic Medicine in nineteenth- century Egypt”

• Mina Khalili (New York University), “Redefining Criminal Evidence”

• Susanna Blumenthal (University of Minnesota), “Toward a Genealogy of the Pathological Liar”

• Mitra Sharafi (University of Wisconsin–Madison), “Planted Poison and Wrongful Convictions”

• Ian Burney (Manchester University), “A History of Innocence: Erle Stanley Gardner, the Court of Last Resort, and the Pursuit of Wrongful Conviction in Post-war America”

Day 2 (Chair: Mitra Sharafi)

• Projit Mukharji (University of Pennsylvania), “Psychic Detectives: Occult technologies and braided forensics in the British Raj”

• Keren Weitzberg (University College London), “White Backlash”

• Claire Cage (University of South Alabama), “Reproductive Bodies and Forensic Medicine in Modern France”

• Catherine Evans (University of Toronto), “Burning Bodies and Medico- Legal Expertise in Nineteenth-Century Britain”

• Binyamin Blum (University of California, Hastings), “Forensic Culture in the Age of Empire: How Colonialism Shaped the Forensic Sciences”

• Chris Hamlin (University of Notre Dame), “The severing of forensic medicine from public health”

The group shared meals at the end of each day using Uber Eats and SpatialChat.

--Mitra Sharafi

Lev, "The Administration of Justice in Medieval Egypt"

New from Oxford University Press: The Administration of Justice in Medieval Egypt: From the 7th to the 12th Century (March 2020), by Yaacov Lev (Bar Ilan University). A description from the Press:

This book shows how political and administrative forces shaped the way justice was applied in medieval Egypt. It introduces the model that evolved during the 7th to the 9th centuries, which involved four judicial institutions: the cadi, the court of complaint (mazalim), the police/shurta (responsible for criminal justice) and the Islamized market law (hisba) administrated by the market supervisor/muhtasib.

Literary and non-literary sources are used to highlight how these institutions worked in real-time situations such as the famine of 1024-1025, which posed tremendous challenges to the market supervisors in Cairo. The inner workings of the court of complaint during the 11th-12th century Fatimid state are revealed through array of documentary sources. Further, non-Muslim communities, their courts and their sphere of responsibilities are treated as integral to how justice was dispensed in medieval Islam. Documentary sources offers significant insights into these issues and illuminate the scope and limits of non-Muslims self-rule/judicial autonomy.

In sum, the book shows that the administrative and political history of the judiciary in medieval Egypt implicitly and explicitly illuminates broader questions about religious and social forces that shaped the lives of medieval people in the Middle East, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

More information is available here.

-- Karen Tani

Adam and friends on crime and forensic objectivity

Alison Adam (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) has edited Crime and the Construction of Forensic Objectivity from 1850, now out with Palgrave Macmillan (2020). From the press:

This book charts the historical development of "forensic objectivity" through an analysis of the ways in which objective knowledge of crimes, crime scenes, crime materials and criminals is achieved. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, with authors drawn from law, history, sociology and science and technology studies, this work shows how forensic objectivity is constructed through detailed crime history case studies, mainly in relation to murder, set in Scotland, England, Germany, Sweden, USA and Ireland. Starting from the mid-nineteenth century and continuing to the present day, the book argues that a number of developments were crucial. These include: the beginning of crime photography, the use of diagrams and models specially constructed for the courtroom so jurors could be "virtual witnesses," probabilistic models of certainty, the professionalization of medical and scientific expert witnesses and their networks, ways of measuring, recording and developing criminal records and the role of the media, particularly newspapers in reporting on crime, criminals and legal proceedings and their part in the shaping of public opinion on crime. This essential title demonstrates the ways in which forensic objectivity has become a central concept in relation to criminal justice over a period spanning 170 years.

Chapter line-up after the break: