Come visit, or revisit, the Library’s exhibit, “Visualizing Capital Punishment: Spectacle, Shame, and Sympathy,” before it closes at the end of July 2023. It’s on view weekdays 9 to 5 in the Library’s Caspersen Room, and is open to all HUID holders. If you can’t make it, visit the online version of the exhibit, which will remain up …
“Visualizing Capital Punishment” Exhibit Closes Soon! Read More »
Post by Matt Seccombe During June I analyzed the defense documents of Walther Funk and one-third of the documents of Admiral Doentiz. This ended one year’s work on the IMT following the COVID related “pause,” and also one year with the defense material. During the year I worked through the documents of defendants Frank, Frick, Funk, Goering, Hess, Kaltenbrunner, …
Post by Matt Seccombe During May I analyzed the defense documents of Julius Streicher, the antisemitic propagandist, and Hjalmar Schacht, the regime’s banker in the 1930s. Streicher was the most repulsive of the defendants and Schacht the most sympathetic. I expected Streicher’s material would be difficult to deal with and Schacht’s to be dull (considering his role as a …
When US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (aka RBG) passed away at age 87 on September 18, 2020, members of the HLS community came together to create a spontaneous memorial (link to Boston Globe article) on the front steps of Langdell Hall to express their grief, admiration, and gratitude for her pathbreaking life and work. Over the …
Post by Matt Seccombe During April I finished the analysis of Hans Frank’s fourth and fifth document books, and then analyzed Wilhelm Frick’s defense documents. Frick, the Interior Minister, presented a more compact defense than the other high-level defendants, relying on his record as a bureaucrat who had no role in the planning of the war and no control …
Post by Matt Seccombe During March I began work on the defense documents of Hans Frank, who was prosecuted mostly for his activities as governor of occupied Poland (the Government General). I worked through three of his five document books. Pluribus aut unum (many or one): On 24 April 1946 Frank’s attorney formally introduced his exhibits, most notably this …
Wednesday March 22, 4 to 5 pm WCC 2019 Milstein West Open to HUID holders Join the HLS Library for a fireside chat moderated by HLS’s Henry J. Friendly Professor of Law Carol Steiker, featuring professors Mugambi Jouet (Associate Professor, USC Gould School of Law), Corinna Barrett Lain (S. D. Roberts & Sandra Moore Professor of Law, University …
HLS Library Event: Fifty Years After Furman: The Death Penalty in America Read More »
Post by Matt Seccombe During February I spent the first third of the month catching up on the transcript work for Keitel’s and Kaltenbrunner’s defense presentations, noting when new documents were entered and documents presented earlier were discussed. Even though these defendants presented few documents themselves compared to Ribbentrop (1/10th as many for Keitel and 1/20th for Kaltenbrunner), they …
Tuesday March 7, 4 to 5 pm WCC 2019 Milstein West AB Open to HUID holders Join the HLS Library for a conversation moderated by Harvard’s 300th Anniversary University Professor Martha Minow, featuring professor John Bessler from the University of Baltimore Law School, Boston-based photographer Lou Jones, and painter/artist/writer Antonio Martorell. This event is part of the Library’s …
HLS Library Event: Scholars and Artists Discuss the Death Penalty Read More »
Post by Matt Seccombe During January I worked through the IMT prosecution’s rebuttal to Ribbentrop’s defense, Keitel’s defense documents, and Kaltenbrunner’s defense documents. Kaltenbrunner’s document book supplement included a bonus of sorts: a set of 15 prosecution documents concerning the killing of captured Allied airmen in mid-1944 (either by the “lynch law” of civilians or by the security police). …