Manzoni: Dr. "Azzeccagarbugli"
Picture by Francesco Gonin, 1840 edition of Alessandro Manzoni's "I promessi sposi"
giovedì 2 aprile 2009
Is law only a complicate way to affirm political power?
As a graduate in law, Kafka knew pretty well the Austrian legal system. His critics of that system is deep and hopeless. Would you share the same attitude towards law, after having learned it for years at the University? Do you know any Italian novel which shares the same pessimistic attitude Kafka shows towards the law?
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29 commenti:
By!
My modest opinion about Kafka’s vision of the law…
I’m not agree whit the idea that the legal system is corrupted. Not all, at least!
I’m not a dreamer, but I think that there are a lot of people that believe in their work, and play fair. The problem isn’t the law, in a sense. The law is “the same for all”…the problem are judges, lowers who are a member of lobby that take care of their interests, only. In this sense the law becomes exploit, not for its normal and main use: but for the interest of the “casta”. Give special attention to not generalize…I think that be lacking in collaboration. Montesquieu teaches us that the power of the state, legislative- judicial-executive are distinct and independent, but without co-operation each of its is profitless. So, the problems are not all of the judges or lowers, but also the politicians and executors.
I remember a fiction, few years ago, that speaks about a “judicial mistake”…the wrong man( Stefano Reali,2005). The film is based on a true story of an innocent man charged for a crime he didn't commit. At the end he was officially recognize innocent and he was indemnify. This is comparable to the Trial, at the beginning, et least.
This isn’t in contradiction with my trust in law…first of all because this is a mistake, not the practice; and second because operators of the jure are human not ironman. I study jurisprudence because I believe that justice isn’t an illusion…
Daniela D’Annibale
Let me answer the question that asked Prof. Conte.
Even if I do not possess a huge legal culture, I see that for many years our country is suffering for a very serious problem.
When you talk about a judiciary, theoretically you should cite an apparatus that ensures the timeliness of the justice processes and decisions.
In Italy, two points are only partially met. Often the processes, to which the public scale, calling it "justice", believing that there must be some people who should be put in jail because in respect of whom there was suspicion, not the certainty of their guilt, however, enact judgments contrary to everything that the masses are asking.
This is about the ordinary people.
An overview of the crimes committed by powerful people who have committed financial crimes, and who are accused, tried and duly convicted, the penalties against them or are very slight, or no proper, because the processes are very long, so that their lawyers are aware of the lengthy trial, the argument that extending the time of trial, so as to fall under the statute (unnecessarily by passing the time by which the same punishment would be ineffective) to their crimes at issue.
In this aspect I agree with Kafka, it expresses an extreme view, passive and without hope in the judicial system of the time, and, in a more broad and expansive civil society. And my opinion is an opinion on the Italian system is the same kind of it.
However, we know from the article of Martha S. Robinson that the world of Kafka and the characters are imaginative and metaphoric: "There is also ambiguity and metaphor in Kafka's refernces to law. In this lexicon, law may meanthe law of God, or of nature, or the institutionalized law of the state. Sometimes it seems to mean all three, as in his aphorism .. ". Moreover, almost everything that tells us about investigations, on the questioning and the process described in his book, are in fact the fruit of his imagination, why are all steps that reverse the values and principles of criminal law and criminal procedure, both czechoslovakian, and global (the arrest without a warrant of arrest and before questioning, the lack of evidence, but also the absence of a judge and a court ..).
However, I am pessimistic, and in agreement with him, as Kafka did not really wanted to show a "real" reality, he has criticized a negative system, because as we have already heard in the class M. Harreman, he used to criticize the jury of those times.
There is an Italian author who expressed pessimism against the Italian judicial system, and that, in addition to outlining the plight of the South, was not present at all in keeping with the Italian justice: Ignazio Silone (S.Tranquilli).
I would like to quote an old comment of A. Simeoni, who suggested "Il segreto di Luca" (1956), which is so much related to his personal experience, many years before.
"On 12 April 1928 an attack in Milan, few minutes before the arrival of King Vittorio Emanuele III, causing 20 dead and 23 wounded. After 6 days, in Como, was arrested on charges of being responsible for the massacre, Romolo Tranquilli, younger brother of Ignatzio. Despite the interest of Don Orione, certain of innocence of the young, who will be able to visit the prison in Marassi, Genoa, Romolo can not prove his innocence and, suffering heavy physical and moral harassment, shall be transferred first to Rome and then the prison of Procida. On 6 June 1931 was sentenced by the Special Court to 12 years' imprisonment for the attempted crossing of the border without documents and political machinations against the regime (in the meantime the head of allocation of the massacre had fallen). By the hard prison of Procida, Romulus, in isolation, corresponds with Don Orione, Pomponio with his cousin, and of course with his brother. Silone, hit hard by the news about his brother, learns of his death in prison in 1932, and not much love never remember the tragic events of which he was leading his Romulus. He will say later that the wife of the writer Darina: "In Zurich, where I met him, I had told some 'time to the tragic story of his brother without details and without emotion. I had to listen in silence: the minimum word I did just change the subject. " (Wikipedia)
Alessandro Festucci
Good evening
I'm attendig with a lot of interest the lessons about Kafka, because I think "The Trial" is absolutely the most pertinent opera about "law and literature" theme that I know.
This assertion could probably seem exaggerated. I'm sure that it's only a student's opinion and for this reason debatable but, anyway, I'm going to explain why I think so. Furthermore it can be said that the mine it is an orientated opinion: in this case I'm the first one who admit it, saying that this point of view is very influenced by the actual italian administrative and processual system as a student of law probably sees it. Sure we are not able to say that this one is not a topical novel. How can someone, who knows the bureaucratic system, deny that Kafka describes our fears as they can be reinterpreted in our nightmares?
I think it's right to consider the differences between the reality and the fiction, to analyze the historical judicial system of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at Kafka's time comparing it with how it's represented in the opera but we don't have to forget the most important thing: Kafka's one is a satyrical and grotesque description. He is "exorcising" (representing it) the deepest and worst fears of whoever should have something to do with law. He is an expert of law and for this he could understend the feelings, the fears of a common man who sees law as something difficult, far and bureaucratic.
So many times there is something absurd in the procedures of law.
In the first part of the book till the second visit to the magistrate (when Josef meets the attendant's wife) everything is dreamlike. Also in the rest of the novel there are some passages which are typically oneiric (very similar to a dream is, for example, the chapter where we see Tintorelli's house with the stair to his appartement and the secondary door that goes out to the offices). We alredy know the end of the story: in order to cite a famous song "You can checkout any time you like, but you can never leave!".
I think everyone who has read the book has had this inexorable sensation and this feeling of uneasiness.
Francesco Mambrini
I am critically worried about the italian legal siystem but, most af all, I am worried for the lobby who rules it. According with my coleagues, I really think that we have a long and wellknown legal culture, our nation was the origin of many legal and philosophical tendencies, our code is a huge inspiration for countries(as China for istance) that don’t have it yet...but as a citizens and as a law student as well I have realized that we have problem to deal with this amazing culture and it really seems to me that we don’t know how to handle it.
Nowdays we are part of a legal system that it’s no more ruled by the law but by the convenient interpration of it…The books of our courts are crowded by laws created “ad personam “, we perfectly know what it means the terms “indulto” and “amnistia” and we also know that the majority of people sitting in our Parliament had penal sentences or they still have a pendent penal process….When I sat down the first day of the first year of my academic career someone told me that the most answered question was about the certainty of punishment…But do we see any kind of certainty of punishment outside of our text books? ....right now, I don't.
Answering to the Prof. Conte ‘s question , I have seen into the kafkanian disillusion the existentialist spirit of Moravia. As kafka, Moravia’s thought is filled of an trustless pessimism, his carachters are unsatisfacted people who feels unable to react and to manipulate their condition..the only thing they do is to close their soul into the indiference giving up from the posibility to create a diferent society. I think ”The indiferents” is a great example of this tendency and shows the principal leit-motiv of Moravia’s poetry : the tentation to highlight the fake and corrupt moralism of the upper class that is able to do anything to get whatever it needs and whatever it wants.I think that this sense of fake and isolation is part of the kafkanian moral as well..
See you tomorrow!
Emanuela Hernandez
Well, this is a million dollars question...
I share indeed Emanuela's pessimistic vision, I totally agree with her when she says that we study perfect machines(laws) in our books and then we find corruption everywhere, first of all in our Parliament.
Our Constitution says we are equal in front of the law, but actually someone is more equal than all the others (and this dangerous quotation comes from "Animal farm", by G.Orwell...), just because of their names and their power.
Where is law?
Where is justice?
Can people tolerate anymore corruption in res publica?
What can we do, as law students?
and as italian citiziens?
Actually we can't change everything, because, as someone said:"shit happens" and it's not so easy to find remedies...
but we can try, we must try as I can't think to be hopeless at 23.
Falcone said "la mafia è un fatto umano e come tutti i fatti umani ha avuto un inizio ed avrà anche una fine", he believed in his ideas and tried to change the system, working hard and defending justice.
someone could say that nothing changed and he died, but I think he gave us hope that something could change, if only we worked hard to reach the result.
this statement can be read not only for mafia and criminal organizations,but also for law in general.
how fight corruption?
how fight legal failures?
with culture and hard work, without sharing the same bad ideas which brought us here.
F. De Andrè sang: "anche se voi vi sentite assolti, siete lo stesso coinvolti"...
Camilla
Hi,
Answering to prof. Conte's question I would like to suggest you to read 'PERCHE' DOLLARI?'by Marco Vichi. This book contains 4 novels and one in particular according to me shares the same pessimistic kafka's attitud towards the law.
It's intitled 'il portafogli' and is about an absurd and paradoxhal situation of a honest man (a paymaster) who finds a wallet full on money and tries to give it back to the owner.
At the end this innocent man will be accused of theft and arrested.
This grotesque and bleeding situation shows the failure of the italian legal system that appear wrongful and oppressive.
Dear all,
I found really interesting the question of Prof. Conte.
Well ! I have to say that at the begging of my studying I couldn’t imagine that to study law it would be meant at first to learn another language and also to learn another way of thinking about all the things that happen in our life! A lot of people think that to study law it means only to know by heart the articles in a code and they can’t understand how difficult can be to study this subject until they get in touch directly with the law! I was and I’m still really fascinated by the law, I like really much to read the articles and understand how important are the single words in an article, how the meaning of it can change only changing one word or also a simple comma. I like to read specially the penal code, according to me is like to read a story, in a lot of articles of the penal code we find the word “someone” and it’s quite surprising to understand that “someone” it means “everyone”, the penal code tells about the story of everyone of us!
I’m not disillusioned but I’m disaffected of the law.
Studying law I understood all the limitations of the law, specially in the procedures. I think that we shouldn’t leave every single aspect of our life in the hand of the law, I mean, it could be wonderful if the law could solve all our problems, but I think that it’s quite impossible and in a certain way even wrong. A lot of people think that legal is the synonymous of “right”, but according to me it’s not like this, and I’m thinking about Guantanamo, or the fascist and Nazi period! I don’t believe in the law, I think that specially in a trial a lot of things are almost unreal! Thinking about the trial I always found really surprising the fact that we can be judge for something that we have done in a single moment of our life and be condemned for all our life, it wont matter if before that time we have been “good”, for the trial our life will start from that moment, form the moment of the crime
( about it there is a wonderful book of Simenon “letter with my judge” )! Studying law I could understand all this little mismatches of the law and also the reason why people ask always for justice even if they don’t really know what justice is.
The law is a very powerful instrument and just like all the powerful instrument it has to be used carefully!
“A duty is whatever is necessary in what is perfectly just.
Permitted is whatever is possible with regard to justice“.
G. Leibniz
Maria Buonanno
Hello everybody!
About prof's Conte question, well, i don't have the same vision of Kafka about the law, indeed i don't agree with the author's criticism. Like you, i've studied law for 5 years, and i think that our system is very different from the Kafka's one. Somebody, during the lectures of this week, mentioned Guantanamo, or Abu Grahib as examples of situations where there are people arrested without a reason. Well, i think that this is not a pertinent example, because if it's true that a lot of muslim persons are in Guantanamo withouth a clear accusation, it's even true that this is a very special case. Don't forget that the prisons of Guantanamo and Abu Grahib were established after a very important terroristic attack, the one of the Twin Towers; besides, those are tipical manifestations of the war law, and we know that this is different from the normal system. So, those are cases where there isn't accusation, but those are sporadic situations. I hope to be clear.
About our daily relationship with law, well, i think that it's not at all an expression of the politic power. Surely there are some laws done and used by our "leadership", but there are a lot of laws created for the people, expecially in this crisis time, with a lot of different interests to save. The problem in Italy is that a lot of us are ready to criticize everything that is done by the politicals. There is a kind of preconception about this, thanks to some newspaper and some famous journalist. If we reflect, well, somebody in Italy is quite like Kafka, considering that there are a lot of bad things (you can look at the satiric pessimism of Marco Travaglio as a new Kafka).
Personally, this is not my vision, so i don't feel like Kafka in his Prague in 1914.
Bye bye
Andrea Severini
I just wanted to point out something, because I don't think that all our laws are "ad personam" ones, but just studing the criminal procedure we had the opportunity to study the whole system and to become aware of many problems.
Even just one law written ad personam is unfair and doesn't respect the constitutional principle written in art3.
Our criminal system doesn't actually look like the kafka's one, but as we studied, the situation was the same till 1989 (during 1930 criminal procedure code).
Lawyers and judges are fundamental in our society, none want to delegitimate their functions and importance, but as all intellectual works (think to the doctors and their Ippocrate's oath, even if many of them don't respect it at all and work just for money, forgetting that people's life depends not only from their competence, but also from their humanity), it asks us to interpretate laws not only in a strict way, but also understanding human situation under and over them.
why don't people trust in justice?
why sould we permit as lawyers that someone is not equal in front of justice?
Camilla
…Robin West VS Richard A. Posner..:
Law and literature or Law and economic??
The fictional situations presented in literature can tell a great deal about political and social situations,and the individual that often find themeselves before the court.
Robin West has frequently turned to Franz Kafka’s “The Trial” to discuss the rule of law and then as a critic of Richard Posner’s more economic take on the law.
West’s argouments tends to focus on the human condition as read in books as well as the individual submission to authority and what she believes to be an apparent contradiction.
Posner is against the position,actually,he has played an important role in the law and economic movement.
Posner is highly critical of the law and literature movement;he does not believe in the use of literary discourse in jurisprudential deabate.
Posner writes that legal method in the method of choice in legal realms,he believes literary works have no place in judical debate because one can never truly contemplate the original meaning of the author and that novels should only be considered in their contexts.
I think that in reality it needs to consider both the positions because partly the judical sistem must have some rules of the maximization of the efficence to work better;in other part it also needs to keep in mind of the human conditions.
I find it is correct certain times to put before the private autonomy of the rules otherwise the “caos” it wuold reign.
I think that this goes done also keeping in mind some subjects that are in position weaker.
In Italy often paradoxically the law ends up being from the part of who breaks the rules and not from the part of the victim of the tort as it should be instead.
It is sufficient to look to some aspects of our penal procedure.
Concluding I advise to read “On the Liberty” by Jhon Stuart Mill,a book that is rich of thematic interesting and above all very actual in which can be peraphs you aim commmon to our dialogue.
See u soon
Federica Meglio
Since I was born I listen the criticism about excessive long times of civil and criminal justice in Italy, but political class has never managed to intervene efficaciously and with global vision on this problem, so far: perhaps, because the discussion is always reduced to an uncritical “referendum” for or against a category (for example the judges) or for/against a single man (for example the journalist Travaglio). Simply, it’s easer!
In my opinion, our criminal judicial system is deeply kafkian: Enzo Tortora’s and Walter Chiari’s cases, in ‘70s and ‘80s, are certainly emblematical.
Not more is changed since 1911, when Federico Garlanda wrote “Lettere di uno yankee sulla Terza Italia” (work discovered by Silvio Lanaro, 80 years later, in the essay “L’Italia Nuova”): in “Lettere di uno yankee sulla Terza Italia” Garlanda, playing an American traveller in Italy, described the situation of our country and criticized our judicial system comparing him with the Anglo-Saxon system.
I think also to the Nanni Loy’s film (with the great Alberto Sordi) “Detenuto in attesa di giudizio”: an italian emigrate in Sweden comes back in Italy with his Swedish wife and sons and he’s captured in the italian frontier station for the manslaughter of an unknown German. In the prison, the man has more difficulties to communicate with the family, with the judge and with Swedish Embassy; he’s even implicate in a prison revolt.
At last he’s declared as a victim of an annoying judicial mistake and he’s freed, but his psyche is irremediably compromised!
See you
Valerio Marinelli
Hi!
This is a very difficult question... I think that kafka's vision of the law is too much pessimistic: I think nobody can study law with a vision like that, because in my opinion law must be something that can help people. I know that it's a very idealistic way to think about law, but I can't face it in a different way, ( reality is very different, I know, but I think is important to hope for a better future ).
Kafka saw just a part of the law, but there is always something good in human being, (lawers are human, even if they think they're some kind of God )
bye!!!
V. Russotto
Hello,
very interesting question.
I must say that I have often to reflect on our legal system and many things would have to say.
Before all that I have noticed in recent years, studying law is that the books describe a system with perfect and makes sense to give the idea that it is simply enforcing the law.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, rather dominates in reality a very slow justice where the postponement of decisions and the slow processes are finding the real victim of the truth of the facts so that citizens, both in criminal and civil justice often get when it is too late and did not sense it. Several have been on this issue the warnings from the European Union.
Symbolic story that comes to mind is the “case Tortora”, the victim of a blatant miscarriage of justice and of a long and disgraceful media lynching.
A dramatic story, which define Kafkaesque would only make the literature on a story which unfortunately is true and really happened.
Became famous the phrase with which Tortora concluded his defense: "I am innocent. I say three years, the cry cards and shout the facts that have emerged from this debate! I am innocent, I hope from my heart that you too should be. "
It 'just a human being who must wait years to get justice?
Not to mention the problem of certainty of punishment. Today are too easily get out of prison people guilty of terrible crimes. When I hear these stories to the news I wonder: where is the justice?
I think you should start from here. The machinery of justice is to recover efficiency and credibility, because the civilization of a nation is measured also by the ability to do justice to its citizens, with certain times and procedures.
I firmly believe that much could be done to improve our situation. Just want it.
(Meanwhile we await the reform of the civil trial).
D'Antona V.
I want to talk about the novel by Kafka: the process.
this novel, like all the other novels of Kafka are unfinished and this,for me,not is a random fact because of his work reflects the fact that Kafka not resolve his inner conflict.
in this novel kafka speak aout ama that is accused, arrested and tried for mysterious reasons.
this man,at the end,dies without knowing the real reasons of his death sentence.
there is a contrast between the rationality of protagonist and the irrationality of the process.
I think that guarantees are important in the process that is in a State.
Emanuela Stabile
Hello! I also agree with the pessimism of legal and Kafka are in agreement with my colleagues who recognize the Italian legal system corruption, excessive length of trials and miscarriages of justice. Already in Italy in 1600 the writer Alessandro Manzoni in his novel "I promessi sposi" is attentive to the issue of justice by demonstrating a critical perspective. In fact, the justice according to the author was in the hands of the most powerful and the victims were the poor and defenseless. The author argues that the population was divided between oppressors and oppressed from the earliest chapters of the book when Don Abbondio meets "i bravi" episode that testifies to the need for less cowardice to take refuge in one of the strongest classes slciali such as church . Another example is in the third chapter, when the protagonist of the novel, Renzo, goes by lawyer Azzeccagarbugli for defend his case and the lawyer when understand that Renzo is the victim and not the criminal hunting him by the bad words. A few centuries I think that justice has not changed much and there are still lawyers and judges corrupted by people who have more power and money.
Giorgia Ciucci
Hi everybody!
I think that Kafka's pessimism about the law can be read in "The Innocent" by John Grisham . Both these two authors have studied law and they haveinterest onthe absurdity of legal system, particularly criminal law, the their country.
In The Innocent Grisham tells the story (actually happened) of a boy wrongly accused of murder.
G.retraces every moment of a judicial affair lasted for more than twelve years, which will end when, a few days before the death penalty, DNA testing will prove the innocence of the protagonist.
A parallel can also be done with another novel-truth: "A sangue freddo" by T. Capote. Here the writer disapprove the death'sentence ,but tells the story so detached, almost journalistic, but it must be recognized the honor of speaking about a subject as explosive in years in which it was difficult to do so.
I share this distrust respect to the law too. I think it loses its potential in the implementation: unfortunately experience shows us that the "justice" is often unjust and that art. 3 cost.increasingly is rejected in favor of the most powerful.
I share Camill's questions and especially her conclusion: we need will and culture, to learn from mistakes and rebuild a better country.
See you!
F. Lanfranconi
Hi all,
I’m not sceptical about our law, I think that the problems are other. It’s true that there are too many laws, some are not clear, and some of these maybe are “ad personam”, but it isn’t all.
Indeed the trials are too long, they are expensive and for these reasons the people often is discouraged and they renounce to find justice.
Besides, in criminal system, the more important problem is the “certainty of punishment”.
In my opinion ,especially in penitentiary system, there are too many mechanisms (escamotage)
that allow to go out of the prison before. For example: liberation for good behaviour and probation ( libertà vigilata). According to me the people will have faith in law, only when the law and the penalty will be applied actually.
bye bye
Vanessa Malizia
Hi all!
I would only like to reply to Andrea Severini’s comment.In spite of what he says in fact I think that Guantanamo is clearly a Kafkaesque case (and the term Kafkaesque like Prof.Mark Harreman said,means something paradoxical, not normal dear Andrea).First of all there are a lot of international treaties on human rights that must be respected even after a cruel attack like the septh.11 one. In addition there is the Pact of Ginevre which regulates the treatment of war prisoners(and torture is not admitted in war laws). From 2001 a lot of people were arrested without possibility of defence and transported to Guantanamo without even knowing what they were accused of and why (something similar happens in Kafka’s trial!!).Confirming what I said there is an important debate in the States about the Guantanamo’ situation and one of the first promises made by the new President Barack Obama is to close it. In conclusion I think that even in tragic situations civil nations must respect international treaties and war laws; if they don’t, they cannot claim justice over terrorism.
Bye Bye
Massimo Manzo
Hi,
replying to Massimo Manzo's comment, thanking him fot the explanations about Guantanamo, i would like to stress some points of my toughts.
Well, about the paradox and the special situation, i have said that Kafka, in his works, criticizes the "normal" law system, surely inventing a paradoxal situation, but this doesn't matter in my speech, because we are talking about the pessimism about law, and not about pessimism about paradoxes.
This is very important to understand the reason why i think that in this case Guantanamo is not a pertinent example.
Pointing out the other things that you wrote, well, i surely agree with you about the errors made by the Usa government, with my speech i didn't want to justify the cruelty of the tortures.
I hope i've been clear about my personal opinions.
Andrea Severini
Bye
dear all,
I want, as Alessandro, speak about law in Ignazio Silone and his "Luca's secret".
For who doesn't know the novel i write a little summary:
Luca Sabatini after thirty years of prison, for a crime that he hasn't committed, is granted and so, he can came back to Cisterna.
Anyone wants speak about that time, about that trial, about that man that is Luca...
In the trial Luca doesn't defend himself.
The town knew of his innocence, the jurymen, the friends, the parents, maybe the judge and the carabineers but anyone talked.
Ignazio Silone runs over again those events, tryes to know , looks for wind into a ball of intrigues that hide itsself in a town where the hipocrisy and the prejudices are as old that seem petrified.
Ignazio discovers, in front of himself, sentiments that anyone tribunal can to sentence or to order...the love. Luca sentences his life and loses his freedom for Ortensia's love. In the same time she sentences herself and her life for he's love, she shows herself as madwoman and so, she spends her last time in a grey nunnery . She is alone and destroyed but happy if she thinks Luca and his love's sacrificie...
In Silone the law arrives after the emotions, after the love...anyone speaks because maybe, all know this priority or maybe ...because in their life reignes the silence.
In Silone as in Kafka the law must to be interpreted, and for this reason under its can to be hidden differents senses and meanings...than we can to choose or to read between linees that we prefer...
This is my thought:
often the interpretation is origine of errors...every war borns by grammatical errors (pascal)
Valentina Carafa
hi everybody!
In the perspective of future lawyer (I hope!), I want to disagree with Kafka regarding his critics of legal system. Kafka was too pessimistic in order to Austrian legal system, and I think that I agree with him, also because it is impossible for you not to have a deep and hopeless opinion about it if a morning you are awakened by two “policemen” who say to you that you are in arrest, without explaining why!
Nevertheless today, in my opinion, the situation have undoubtedly much improved lately! Of course, Italian bureaucracy still makes everything more difficult, but meanwhile we have a lot of costitutional warranties that help the citizens: nobody can be arrested without know why, nobody is guilty until a definitive sentence...
Guarantees directly date from Magna Charta Libertatum (15/06/1215) which issues “inalienable rights”, among them there is the guarantee for everybody of not to be imprisoned without having been regularly tried before ("habeas corpus integrum")
I have a feeling that the incipit of “The Trial” instead speaks about a regime, a totalitarian country, or else, in order to actualize Kafka, we can make a comparison with the recent experiences of European terrorism that we lived in the period after 11/09/2001: but in this case everything is partially justified by different historical reasons.
See you after Easter holidays!
Pierluigi Oddone
I am not agree with Kafka’ s fatal vision with the law.
In France, the judicial system is very worked, everything is prepared.. Citizens have the “right” of fair process, there is a lot of issues for them, a lot of helps even if they do not have money. If they consider the process result unfair they can make another appeal. Finally the system is like that and it works, the only problem is the long time between each procedures.
“The outsiders” by Albert Camus, French writer is in the same way of Kafka, it speaks about a black man who had killed another man but not really because he wanted, it was in the events, he is arrested, and like Kafka he does not feel interests by his process, he does not try to make him a defense, it is just like that.. And finally he will be killing.. During all the story, he feels foreigner to the society..
anne marguerite Barbier
Hi everybody,
What struck me most in "The Trial" by F. Kafka is the total sense of
confusion it causes in the reader: Kafka draws around the protagonist Joseph K. a surreal world full of contradictions, in whichany logic seems not to exist . K. is the portrait of average man, with a
normal life and a
normal work, who founds himself in the middle of a not
more specified legal issue. The background of "The Trial" is an
apparently fictitious, selfless, cold reality that does not include the personal stories of individuals: the whole judicial system, as described
in "The Trial", is an unstoppable and omnivorous machine, and
the protagonist can only passively suffer its harassment. This view of law is certainly exaggerated, but not for this incredible.
how many times in life happen to collide against a bureaucrat, totally uninterested in
the personal affairs of who is front of him, that with arrogant tone ask you to fill this or that form in order to obtain the desired result?
So I think that Kafka wants to say that the judge should not
be a bureaucrat. The story of K. is the story of a judicial
persecution. You can see the same situation reported in the news
every day: this is unfortunately the balance of a law a little “too
equal” for all, which does not considers the persecuted's background, but ,as a blind axe, it falls on the head of the guilty. Obviously the
law ,as we know it, can't be this one: especially in the
criminal law it has to consider the circumstances of the individual cases, the
psychological state of the guilty, his conduct before and
after the execution of the act, his right to defend himself.
Finally, the judicial system designed by Kafka is certainly
exaggerated and surreal, but it allows us to consider some issues of the modern judicial system.
From this point of view "The trial" seems to me deeply linked to "Storia della colonna infame" by A.Manzoni,as in both
of them we can find a similar description of the judicial system.
In
the second one the trial is totally based on fear of plague and on
prejudice, as people are damned because of the necessity to find a
guilty.
judges use their power not to find justice, without considering
specific circumstances related to the case, but in order to ensure a
punishment indeed, without keeping in consideration who's going to
be punished.
See you soon.
Enrico Veri
Goodmorning everybody!
I just want to point out an article from La Repubblica of today wich name is "Processo al capitale(Se i mercati cancellano l'etica)". It really takes up the same arguments we talk about the past week with Prof. Harreman.
The international crisis, the credit crunch, the liberism theories and ethic distruction process are these all themes developed in this article from a psicological and sociological point of view!
Check it out!
Happy easter to everybody!
Emanuela Hernandez
hi..
when I read Kafka, I think: why did I study law? Is it for an universal sense of justice of to ensure myself some kind of great professional future? I am quite pessimistic about law, not only our Italian law system, but the world's legal system. Going back to he past, my first thought of studying law recall to my teen period. Having a new concept of social life gave me some thought about my future, and too many crimes in he world are comitted so that I thought: we are getting used about poeple stealing properties, killing others, comitting horrible crimes just to get the growth of their own fortune. That's it: a pure utopical thinking. And studying law permitted myself to realize how the whole system is different as we think it is..kafka seems to be pessimistic maybe also for this fact..!When we study international law, which is the law of human beings, human rights, human treatments against injustice..we know at least that all the charts are useless because nobody can really control the behavior of the states,there's no army of peace as we could call it and maybe that's why Kafka doesn't trust the law.
However, some few example of justice exist. Our job is to make them non rare cases but everydays situations.
see you all!
Answer to Prof.Conte's question
Reading Kafka's trial, I can say that sometimes also my attitude towards legal system is the same of him.
I think punishments in our criminal code are right but many times judjes don't apply them in the correct way.
Sometimes you have people who commits very grave crimes and they're condemned only for few years of prison.
In this cases my thought goes to the victims' family who wants justice and this justice will never arrive.
In another side I see instead innocent people accused and imprisoned and only after many years of prison recognized innocent (for example Enzo Tortora's case and other that I studied in criminal procedure).
Can a compensation erase what these people feel during the time they are imprisoned?
In my opinion in these cases is important punish judges for their mistakes.
Bye
Giorgia Melia
Hi everybody!
About professor Conte's question, I agree with kafka's pessimistic view of law and society. Of course kafka's world is paradoxical, not real one; and of course, our society made many steps forward in safeguarding human rights.
Anyway sometimes human rights, expecially processual human rights remain on the paper.
I'm thinking about, in Italian processual system, about "custodia cautelare in carcere". Judges often apply this preventive measure over and over, breaking the constitutional guarantee of art.27, II Comma.
In 1988 was brought in our legislation "riparazione per l'ingiusta detenzione" (art.314 cpp), a very cold comfort for somuone put into jail.
Moreover, I'd like to mention the lenght of italian processes, one of the worst problems of italian justice: that's make a trial a very kafkian situation!
About the discussion between Manzo and Severini, I agree with Manzo's reconstruction.
Episode like Guantanamo show hypocricy of many western democracies.
For example, let's take a look at Saddam's process, violating every rule of due process, first of all the rule of "giudice naturale precostituito".
It would be less hypocritical situation to shot him in the head when he was found and told the world that he was found dead! (It's just a paradox, please don't take it literally).
Bye
Andrea Marangoni
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