Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Stanford Law Review Online
Abstract
Bernadette Meyler’s Theaters of Pardoning offers a profound and provocative meditation on the relationship between forgiveness and the state. In this comment, I follow her methodological and substantive lead by taking literary and legal approaches to a curious form of pardoning she discusses in her work—the “Act of Oblivion.” The Act of Oblivion operated as a super-pardon: It was “a form of general amnesty erasing the record of the underlying events rather than simply remitting punishment.” Pardon is to oblivion as forgiving is to forgetting. Part I briefly describes the Act of Oblivion and its superficial merits. Part II turns to the more telling critiques of such acts. Part III suggests that the Anglo-American repudiation of Acts of Oblivion continues to shape present-day jurisprudence. Part IV observes that despite this formal rejection, the spirit of such acts lives on in governmental gaslighting of the public, which asks the public to disown what it knows. Part V concludes.
First Page
65
Volume
72
Publication Date
2020
Recommended Citation
Kenji Yoshino,
Acts of Oblivion,
72
Stanford Law Review Online
65
(2020).
Available at:
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-articles/1512
