Law and Catastrophe

Austin Sarat is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science and Five College Fortieth Anniversary Professor at Amherst College. Lawrence Douglas is Professor of Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought, Amherst College. Martha Merrill Umphrey is Associate Professor of Law, Jurisprudence & Social Thought, Amherst College.

"Law and Catastrophe is an edited collection that explores this inextricable and symbiotic relationship between these two concepts in the short span of five chapters. It presents to the reader a witty and often engaging group of literary essays that dissect various guises of how law and catastrophe interpenetrate."—Law and Politics Book Review "Law and Castastrophe offers a diverse and fascinating set of essays. There has never been a more urgent need for such a work on catastrophe and law." —Anthony J. Sebok, Brooklyn Law School "This cogent work is based on the insight that, even when it proves itself palpably unable to deal with catastrophe, law can yet reassert itself, reproducing the bases of its authority over and over again. Indeed, this very act of reassertion is revealed to be the basis of legal authority itself. This book is a must read for any scholar interested in seeing the performance of law when its veneer of total control and stability have been stripped away." —James R. Martel, San Francisco State University

• Contents Acknowledgments000 Contributors000 A Jurisprudence of Catastrophe: An Introduction000 Lawrence Douglas, Austin Sarat, Martha Umphrey Catastrophe: Plowing Up the Ground of Reason000 Linda Ross Meyer Catastrophes and Humanitarian Corporate Responsibility: A Conceptual Critique 000 Ronen Shamir Political Catastrophe and Liberal Legal Desire: Two Stories of Revolution, Remediation, and Return from the French Nineteenth Century000 Sylvia Schafer Committed to Memory: Rebecca West's Nuremberg000 Ravit Pe'er-Lamo Reichman Mandating the National Memory of Catastrophe000 James E. Young Index000