Some Analytical Implications of the Statutory Construction of Genocide

Abstract

The explicit legal definition of "genocide" as a "crime" derived specifically from the conditions of the Holocaust. Despite the conjuncturally bound nature of the concept, the ideological basis for the definition rested in a model of "genocide" as an historically ubiquitous and perpetually imminent possibility in human affairs. The tension between the immediate political ends of the concept's legal architects and the desire to use the criminalization of genocidal practice as a deterrent to future incidences, as well as to make ideological capital at a time of the Cold War, produced a United Nations Genocide Treaty with an inherently contradictory and limited character. This paper examines these contradictions and asks whether there is any utility in looking to the statutorily embedded model of genocide to decide whether genocidal practices are being directed toward African-Americans today.

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