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Adjudicating the Salvadoran Civil War: Expectations of the Law in Romagoza
Author(s) -
Rubin Jonah
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
polar: political and legal anthropology review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.529
H-Index - 27
eISSN - 1555-2934
pISSN - 1081-6976
DOI - 10.1111/j.1555-2934.2008.00025.x
Subject(s) - lawsuit , plaintiff , jury , law , appeal , tort , torture , political science , politics , spanish civil war , narrative , presentation (obstetrics) , civil litigation , sociology , human rights , philosophy , medicine , linguistics , liability , radiology
This article analyzes the experiences of Neris Gonzalez, one of the three Salvadoran plaintiffs who brought a successful lawsuit against the former heads of the Salvadoran military for the torture she suffered in 1979. In analyzing the presentation of the case, I focus on the specific transformations that political and historical disputes undergo as they are subsumed into the formal rules of U.S. tort litigation. Further, I pay special attention to the ways legal narratives are designed specifically to appeal to a jury comprising 10 lay U.S. citizens, who have no familiarity with Salvadoran history. I demonstrate how torts litigation requires a depoliticization of the plaintiff and a personalization of history. I argue that, due to the form of the court fails in addressing the historical disputes in question.