Bernadette Meyler is Carl and Sheila Spaeth Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Curriculum and Professor (by courtesy) of English at Stanford University. She is the co-editor of New Directions in Law and Literature and The Oxford Handbook of Law and Humanities. Follow her on X @MeylerBernie.

A valuable contribution to Law and Humanities scholarship and reflection on the future of liberal constitutionalism, Meyler's book cuts to the quick of pardoning practices from seventeenth-century England to contemporary America. Highlighting both the seemingly irresistible draw of pardoning as a theatrical assertion of sovereign power and the revolutionary opportunities latent in the uncoupling of sovereignty from the figure of the sovereign ruler, Meyler pierces the illusion of absolute authority and sets out an alternative Arendtian vision for the state grounded in forgiveness.(The New Rambler)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Theaters of Pardoning1. Dramatic Judgments: Measure for Measure, Revenge, and the Institution of the Law2. Emplotting Politics: James I and the "Powder Treason"3. Non-Sovereign Forgiveness: Mercy among Equals in The Laws of Candy4. From Sovereignty to the State: The Tragicomic Clemency of Massinger's The Bondman5. Between Royal Pardons and Acts of Oblivion: The Transitional Justice of Cosmo Manuche and James Compton, Earl of Northampton6. Pardoning Revolution: The 1660 Act of Oblivion and Hobbes's Recentering of SovereigntyPostlude: Pardoning and Liberal ConstitutionalismAppendix AAppendix BBibliographyIndex

Bernadette Meyler is Carl and Sheila Spaeth Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Curriculum and Professor (by courtesy) of English at Stanford University. She is the co-editor of New Directions in Law and Literature and The Oxford Handbook of Law and Humanities. Follow her on X @MeylerBernie.

A valuable contribution to Law and Humanities scholarship and reflection on the future of liberal constitutionalism, Meyler's book cuts to the quick of pardoning practices from seventeenth-century England to contemporary America. Highlighting both the seemingly irresistible draw of pardoning as a theatrical assertion of sovereign power and the revolutionary opportunities latent in the uncoupling of sovereignty from the figure of the sovereign ruler, Meyler pierces the illusion of absolute authority and sets out an alternative Arendtian vision for the state grounded in forgiveness.(The New Rambler)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Theaters of Pardoning1. Dramatic Judgments: Measure for Measure, Revenge, and the Institution of the Law2. Emplotting Politics: James I and the "Powder Treason"3. Non-Sovereign Forgiveness: Mercy among Equals in The Laws of Candy4. From Sovereignty to the State: The Tragicomic Clemency of Massinger's The Bondman5. Between Royal Pardons and Acts of Oblivion: The Transitional Justice of Cosmo Manuche and James Compton, Earl of Northampton6. Pardoning Revolution: The 1660 Act of Oblivion and Hobbes's Recentering of SovereigntyPostlude: Pardoning and Liberal ConstitutionalismAppendix AAppendix BBibliographyIndex

Bernadette Meyler is Carl and Sheila Spaeth Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Curriculum and Professor (by courtesy) of English at Stanford University. She is the co-editor of New Directions in Law and Literature and The Oxford Handbook of Law and Humanities. Follow her on X @MeylerBernie.

A valuable contribution to Law and Humanities scholarship and reflection on the future of liberal constitutionalism, Meyler's book cuts to the quick of pardoning practices from seventeenth-century England to contemporary America. Highlighting both the seemingly irresistible draw of pardoning as a theatrical assertion of sovereign power and the revolutionary opportunities latent in the uncoupling of sovereignty from the figure of the sovereign ruler, Meyler pierces the illusion of absolute authority and sets out an alternative Arendtian vision for the state grounded in forgiveness.(The New Rambler)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Theaters of Pardoning1. Dramatic Judgments: Measure for Measure, Revenge, and the Institution of the Law2. Emplotting Politics: James I and the "Powder Treason"3. Non-Sovereign Forgiveness: Mercy among Equals in The Laws of Candy4. From Sovereignty to the State: The Tragicomic Clemency of Massinger's The Bondman5. Between Royal Pardons and Acts of Oblivion: The Transitional Justice of Cosmo Manuche and James Compton, Earl of Northampton6. Pardoning Revolution: The 1660 Act of Oblivion and Hobbes's Recentering of SovereigntyPostlude: Pardoning and Liberal ConstitutionalismAppendix AAppendix BBibliographyIndex