Law School

Hadar Aviram on Law and Disobedience in Israeli Military Courts

By University at Buffalo Law School

Welcome to UBLaw Conversations, a production of University at Buffalo Law School and the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy. Today is August 27, 2008, and I'm James Milles, Professor of Law and Director of the Law Library.Our guest today is Hadar Aviram. Professor Aviram is Associate Professor at UC Hastings College of the Law. Her research interests include sociology of law, criminology and criminal justice, and social movements. Her article, "How Law Thinks of Disobedience: Perceiving and Addressing Desertion and Conscientious Objection in Israeli Military Courts," appears in Law & Policy, Volume 30, Issue 3 (July 2008). Professor Aviram is interviewed here by Professor Colin Scott, Professor of EU Regulation and Governance at University College Dublin, and co-editor of Law and Policy.

Abstract: The study transcends the dichotomy "law in the books"/"law in action" by taking law's knowledge-production mechanisms seriously. It examines how the Israeli military justice system perceives and addresses disobedience toward the mandatory military service duty by deserters and conscientious objectors. Both groups resist the military service ethos but differ in the offenders' demographics and motivations. The findings show how law co-opts the socio-political problems, assimilates them, and transforms them to narrow its framework. The legal system can be cognitively open to external frameworks introduced by powerful and resourceful defendants; it remains, however, normatively closed to alternative rules and perspectives.

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Full post as published by UBLaw on August 27, 2008 (boomark / email).