The State of Blame: Politics, Competition, and the Courts in Democratic Athens (original) (raw)
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Lawcourts are often portrayed as a check upon legislatures. That interpretative paradigm is visible within the scholarship on classical Athenian democracy, in the claim that certain legal reforms of the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC that enhanced the role of the popular courts in law-making were intended to check hasty decision-making by assembly-goers. This article argues that, on the contrary, those reforms were intended to help secure the political supremacy of the demos (“assembly,” “collective common people”) over the political elite (office-holders and political leaders). The relative poverty and age of judges, random selection, restrictions on speech, the secret ballot, the openly self-regarding quality of demotic justice, and judges’ role in disciplining politicians made the courts an excellent guarantor of popular rule, better in some respects than the assembly. Assembly-goers and judges delivered a “one-two punch” that preserved demokratia by keeping the political elite in its place.
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Having followed a deliberate path of studying a wide range of topics while at university, I recognise that Classics resonates through almost every aspect of academia. I also recognise the benefit of two important influences on my education. First, "fortune" has delivered me to the right places and people, and at the right time. Second, my determination to recognise opportunities and persist has allowed me to pursue opportunities when they arose. I would like to thank the staff, both academic and administrative, at the VUW Classics Department for making opportunities available for me to pursue, and for allowing me to pursue them. In particular, Dr David Rosenbloom, my supervisor, has been a source of huge support and learning. Any persistent problems within this thesis are not through lack of trying on his part. It has been both an honour and a privilege to have his guidance through my postgraduate years. In addition, Dr Matthew Trundle throughout the years has consistently been supportive of me both as a student and as a person. I would also like to thank my friends and family, especially Trina, for all the support throughout my education, in as much as it is complete.
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The elusive populist phenomenon has been the focus of numerous studies in recent years, with the reliance of populism on divisive and aggressive rhetoric being acknowledged. The paper aims to apply these findings to the Athenian forensic rhetoric and identify manifestations of populist rhetoric in the antagonistic arena of Athenian courts. By reference to the most 'political' of public trials, namely the indictments against inexpedient laws and illegal decrees, it is argued that the rhetorical strategies employed by the Athenian litigants who sought to persuade mass audiences in a zero-sum process, have much in common with modern populist discourse. Aiming to secure the good will of the dicasts, speakers competed over their level of adherence to the shared traditional values and norms of Athenian society, making the audience the nodal point of their rhetoric. Artfully interpellating the audience into a fictitiously pure and homogeneous group, litigants sought to establish concord with the dicasts while alienating the opponent. The division between the pure demos and the corrupt establishment, allowed the speakers to use a divisive and aggressive rhetoric, through which the adversary was presented as an outsider, representative of the out-group of corrupt political elite who undermined the political and moral principles upon which the Athenian identity was based.
E. Cavanagh (ed) Empire and Legal Thought: Ideas and Institutions from Antiquity to Modernity, Leiden (Brill, Legal History Library), 2020
This chapter explores the legal arguments and ideas in the trial against the honorary decree for Charidemus (Dem. 23) as a case study of Athenian interstate relations in the fourth century BCE. The decree was challenged in court through a procedure of judicial review (graphē paranomon). The chapter sets the discussion of the legal arguments against its institutional background. It then analysed the juridical interpretation of the Athenian statutes at the trial, and their wider implications for the use of public honours to foster Athenian hegemonic ambitions in the aftermath of the Social War. (see link to the Brill website)