The Faculty of Law at Victoria University of Wellington invite you to attend a Public Lecture on

Law in the social constitution of the Holocaust

presented by

Professor Wayne Morrison
Sir Eric Hotung Visiting Fellow 2015

Abstract
2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the first time that the Jewish world population has reached that of the pre-Holocaust level.  It is fitting, therefore, that the 2015 Hotung Fellow’s theme is “Law in the social constitution of the Holocaust”.

Morrison argues that, with the discovery of the camps and the use of film of the atrocity at the IMT Nurmerberg, an “optic of viewing” was created that distorted our appreciation of the role of law in the Holocaust. A narrative was created of a band of international brigands, who had seized control of a modern state and forced an unwilling populace to engage in acts beyond the capacity of civilisation to comprehend.  The metaphor was that of vandals who had “defiled the German Temple of Justice”, which must be “re-consecrated”.  A duality was presented: on the one side a lawless and barbarous arena, on the other side proper “law” that was in the service of “civilisation”. However, Morrison argues that the holocaust was only possible because of law, the process was full of law and the perpetrators adopted a normative understanding of what they were doing.  The Nazi project strove to create a new nomos – a nomos that was terrifying in its inhumanity but also expressing modernity and reflecting themes that were accepted as progressive and civilised elsewhere.

Professor Wayne Morrison, School of Law, Queen Mary University of London
Wayne Morrison is Professor of Law, Queen Mary University of London and Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand. At QM he teaches courses on Criminology and has developed the only undergraduate course in the world on Law and the Holocaust. His writings span Criminology, Legal Theory and the Holocaust and have been translated into Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian. He was Director of the University of London’s external programmes for Law (1999-2009) and has travelled and lectured globally. Recently he has worked towards a more global criminology that includes topics traditionally excluded from the canon, such as genocide, war and methods of representation and remembrance. His most recent book in criminology is Criminology, Civilisation and the New World Order (Routledge, 2006, Spanish edition 2012) and he is currently working on a book on Law and the Holocaust. The Hotung Visiting Fellowship is administered by the Faculty of Law at the University of Canterbury for the purpose of hosting distinguished judges and legal research academics.

 Please RSVP to law-events@vuw.ac.nz.