History in the Making – “Trials of Sovereignty Mercy, Violence, and the Making of Criminal Law in British India, 1857–1922” by Alastair McClure (HKU)
Faculty Lounge (Run Run Shaw Tower 4.30)Trials of Sovereignty offers the first legal history of mercy and discretion in nineteenth and twentieth-century India. Through a study of large-scale amnesties, the prerogative powers of pardon, executive commutation, and judicial sentencing practices, Alastair McClure argues that discretion represented a vital facet of colonial rule. In a bloody penal order, officials and judges consistently […]