Publication details

Finding Unfindable: Towards Theory of Juridico–Archival Ideology

Authors

WASSOUF Dennis

Year of publication 2022
Type Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Law

Citation
Description Juridical mechanism functions through archives. Through citations, references and links to the past, judges authoritatively construct reality. To engage in such a construction project, it is essential for judges to recall what has been forgotten or set aside. Laws, statutes, precedents, and doctrinal commentaries need to be opened in the archives and revisited. What is to be found in the archives are traces of legal origins that legitimize all further decision-making. Archives speak the language of tradition, of solid foundations and consistency, and judges easily succumb to this language, which becomes modus operandi of judicial ideology. This kind of juridico–archival ideology obscures the emptiness of the archive, masking its non-meaning and contingency as an objective necessity. This essay aims to deconstruct the relationship of ideology, archive, judicial decision-making and memory. This will point out that the ideologically concealed emptiness of the archive – as a support for judicial decision-making – is also the cause for the emptiness of decision-making as such. It will show that this emptiness is not something negative or paralysing, but is instead what shapes the role of the judiciary.

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