Legal Culture on Justice and Truth: The Tribunals of Inquiry about Bloody Sunday

Authors

  • Josefa Dolores Ruiz Resa Universidad de Granada, Spain

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17561/tahrj.v15.5777

Keywords:

Legal Culture, Bloody Sunday, Tribunal of Inquiry, Justice, Truth, Legalism, Colonialism, Legitimacy

Abstract

Almost 50 years ago, in the events that happened during the so-called Bloody Sunday (Derry 1972, 30th January), 13 Catholic civilians were killed because of the actions of the British army during a civil rights march against internment without trial in Northern Ireland. Other 13 civilians were injured. While the circumstances were unclear, these civilians were considered to be terrorists, which seemed to justify the gunfire. The findings on Bloody Sunday from two Tribunals of Inquiry (1972 and 1998-2010), and the reactions that their resulting reports raised are an excellent example of cultural impregnation in law. In this regard, it is possible to find a general notion of justice as truth. Guaranteeing such notion (or, at least, the willingness to ensure it) seemed to facilitate the peace process in Northern Ireland. Under the light of these events, the following pages aim to analyse how that legal culture of justice as truth is displayed in the two Bloody Sunday Tribunals of Inquiry as well as its contribution to the contestation of the British legal system or its legitimacy. This paper starts by reviewing previous studies about the conceptual framework of the analysis — it examines the concept of “legal culture” and the understanding of justice as truth, as well as the definition of Tribunal of Inquiry. Next, it argues cultural perceptions regarding Bloody Sunday Inquiries. The conclusions exposed reveal that the legal culture of justice as truth is also embodied in legalism and colonialism.

References

AIKEN, N. T. (2015) "The Bloody Sunday Inquiry: Transitional Justice and Postconflict Reconciliation in Northern Ireland, Journal of Human Rights, Volume 14, Issue 1, pp. 101-123. https://doi.org/10.1080/14754835.2014.987740

ARISTODEMOU, M. (2014) Law, Psychoanalysis, Society. Taking the unconscious seriously. Routledge: London. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315885155

BARCAT, Ch. (2014) "Re-writing the Official Narrative of Bloody Sunday: The Role of Photographs. Revue LISA (Literature, history of Ideas, images and Societies of the English-Speaking world, vol. XII, Nº 3, pp. 1-17. Avalibale at https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/6050?lang=en. [last retrieved 17/02/2020]. https://doi.org/10.4000/lisa.6042

BERNALES ROJAS, G. (2016) "El derecho a la verdad". Estudios Constitucionales, Year 14, Nº 2, 2016, pp. 263-304. https://doi.org/10.4067/S0718-52002016000200009

BENTLEY, T. (2016) Empires in Remorse : Narrative, postcolonialism and apologies for colonial atrocity, Routledge: New York. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315746722

BLAIR, T. (1998), Statement by Tony Blair, then British Prime Minister, establishing the new Inquiry, (29 January 1998). London: House of Commons. Available at https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmhansrd/vo980129/debtext/80129-06.htm and at https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/bsunday/tb29198.htm. [last retrieved 17/02/2020].

BLOM-COOPER, L. (2019) Public Inquiries. Wrong Route on Bloody Sunday. Hart Publishing.

BLOOM, H. (1995) El canon occidental. Barcelona: Anagrama.

BOBBIO, N. (1980) "Naturaleza y función de la filosofía del Derecho", in Bobbio, N. Contribución a la Teoría del Derecho. Valencia: Fernando Torres ed., pp. 91-101.

British Irish Right Watch (1994) Submission to the United nations's Special Rapporteur On Summary And Arbitrary Executions. Available on http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/bsunday/birw.htm [last retrieved 27/02/2020].

BRUNER, J. (1990) Acts of Meanings. Cambridge (Massachusetts)-London: Harvard University Press.

BRUNER, J. (1996) The Culture of Education. Cambridge (Massachusetts)-London: Harvard University Press.

BRUNER, J. (2003) Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life. Cambridge (Massachusetts)-London: Harvard University Press.

BUENO, G. (2000) El mito de la cultura. Ensayo de una filosofía materialista de la cultura. Barcelona: Prensa Ibérica.

CAMERON, D. (2010) Statement by David Cameron, then British Prime Minister, following the publication of the report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, House of Commons, London,(Tuesday 15 June 2010). London: House of Commons. Available at https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/issues/politics/docs/pmo/dc150610.htm and at https://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmhansrd/vo980129/debtext/80129-06.htm [last retrieved 17/02/2020].

CAMPBELL, C. & NÍ AOLÁIN, F. (2002), "Local Meets Global: Transitional Justice in Northern Ireland", Fordham International Law Journal, Volume 26, Isse 4, pp. 871-892.

CAMPBELL, J. and HERRON, T. (eds.) (2008), Harrowing of the Heart the Poetry of Bloody Sunday. Derry: Guildhall Press.

CAMPBELL, J. (2013) Setting the truth Free. The Inside Story of the Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign. Liberties Press.

CLARK, H. (2012) "Befitting Emblems: The Early 1970s", in Breaton and Gillis (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry. Oxford: Oxford Unviersity Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199561247.013.0024

Civil Rights Movement (1972) Massacre at Derry. Derry: Civil Rights Movement (available at https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/bsunday/mad.htm) [last retrieved 17/02/2020].

Commission of Human Rights (2005) The updated set of principles for the protection and promotion of human rights through action to combat impunity, 8 February 2005 (E/CN. 4/2005/102(Add. 1).

CONWAY, B. (2010) Conmemoration and Bloody Sunday. Pathways of memory. Basingstoke-New York: Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230248670

FRIEDMAN, L. (1969) "Legal Culture and Social Development", Law & Society Review, Journal of the Law and Society Association, Vol. 4, No 1, pp. 29-44. https://doi.org/10.2307/3052760

FRIEDMAN, L. (1977) Law and Society An Introduction. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

FRIEDMAN, L. (1989) "Law, Lawyers, and Popular Culture", The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 98, No 8, Symposium: Popular Legal Culture (June, 1989), pp. 1579-1606. https://doi.org/10.2307/796606

FRIEDMAN, L. (1994) Total Justice. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

FRIEL, BRIAN (1974) The Freedom of the City: A Play in two Acts. Samuel French.

GADAMER, G (1977) Verdad y método, Salamanca: Sígueme.

GILLESPIE, M. P. (2008) The Myth of an Irish Cinema: Apporaching Irish-Themed Films. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press.

GILROY, P. (1995) "British Cultural Studies and the Pitfalls of Identity" in Curran, Morley and Walkerdine (eds.). Cultural Studies and Communication. London-New Dheli-New York-Syney: Bloomsbury.

GLEITMAN, C. (2001) "Negotiating Hostory, Negotiating Myth: Friel among His Contemporaries", in King, K. (ed.) Modern Dramatists: A Casebook of major British, Irish, American Playwrigts. New York-Oxford: Routledge.

GRIMALDI, F. (1972, 1998) Blood in the Street. Derry: Guildhall Press.

HAYES, P. and CAMPBELL, J. (2005), Bloody Sunday. Trauma, Pain and Politics. Pluto Press: London-Dublin-Ann Harbor MI.

HERRON, T and LYNCH, J. (2007), After the Bloody Sunday: Ethics, Representation, Justice, Cork University Press, Cork.

KINSELLA, Th. (1979) Butcher's Dozen: A Lesson for the Octave of Widgery. Dublin: Dolmen.

LACHMAN, M. (2007) "History or journalism: two narrative paradigms in Bloody Sunday Scenes from the Saville Inquiry by Richard Norton-Taylor", Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 43, pp. 305-314.

LAWTHER, Ch. (2014) Truth, Denial and Transition. Northern Ireland and the Contested Past, New York: Routledge.

LEGAZ y LACAMBRA, L. (1953) Filosofía de Derecho. Barcelona: Bosch.

LÓPEZ GUERRA, L. (2018) "El derecho a la verdad: ¿la emergencia de un nuevo derecho en la jurisprudencia del Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos?", Anuario Iberoamericano de Justicia Constitucional, 22, pp. 11-30. Available at a [retrieved 24/07/2020]. https://doi.org/10.18042/cepc/aijc.22.01

McCAFFERTY, N. (1989), Peggy Deery: A Derry Family at War. London: Virago.

McCANN, E., and SHIELS, M. (eds.) (1992) Bloody Sunday in Derry: What Really Happened. Dingle: Brandon Books.

McCANN, E. (ed.) (2006) The Bloody Sunday Inquiry: The Family Speak Out. London; Ann Arbor Mich: Pluto Press.

McCLEAN, R. (1997) The Road to Bloody Sunday. Derry: Guildhall Press.

McCORMICK, S. (2013/2014) "Heroes with Their Hands in the Air: Memory and Commemoration in the Contemporary Documentary Theater", Kritica Kutura, 21/22. https://doi.org/10.13185/KK2013.02116

McEVOY, K. (2013) The Trouble with Truth. Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland. Willam Publishing.

MILL, J. S. (1891) Considerations on representative Government. London: Parker, Son and Burn, West Strand.

MOI, R. (2011) "In a gosthly pool of blood/ a crumpled phantom hugged the mud": Spectropoetic Presentations of Bloody Suanday and the crisis of Northern Ireland", in Karhio, A., Crosson, S., and Armstrong, Ch. I., Crisis and contemporary poetry. London: Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230306097_5

MONKS, A. (2013) "'This Painful Chpater': Performing the Law in Bloody Sunday: Scenes from Saville Inquiry", Contemporary Theatre Review, volume 23, Issue 3. https://doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2013.806321

MULLAN, D. (1997) Eyewitness Bloody Sunday. Dublin: Wolfhound.

NAQVI, Y. (2006) "The right to the truth in the International Law: fact or fiction?", International Review of the Red Cross, volume 88, Issue 862, June, pp. 24-273. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1816383106000518

NEUMANN, P. (2003) Britain's Long War: British Strategy in the Northern Ireland Conflict 1969-98. Palgrave MacMillan, New York.

PÉREZ, C. (2006) "Derecho y literatura", Isonomia, Issue 24, April.

PÖTZSH, H. (2011) "Renegotiating difficult past: Two Documentary dramas on Bloody Sunday, Derry 1972, Memory Studies. September 13. https://doi.org/10.1177/1750698011418151

PRINGLE, P. and JACOBSON, P. (2000) Those are real bullets, aren't they? London: Fourth Estate.

PURDUE, M. (2009) "Public Inquiries as a Part of Public Administration" in D. Feldman (ed.), English Public Law. 2ª edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Report of the tribunal 1972, appointed to inquire into the events on Sunday, 30 January 1972, which led to loss of life in connection with the procession in Londonderry on that day by The Rt. Hon. Lord Widgery, O.B.E., T.D. H.L. 101, H.C. 220, April 1972, London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, available at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/hmso/widgery.htm [last retrieved 17/02/2020].

Report of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry (2010). The Rt Hon The Lord Saville of Newdigate (Chairman) The Hon William Hoyt OC The Hon John Toohey AC. 10 volumes. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 15 June 2010. Available https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/report-of-the-bloody-sunday-inquiry [last retrieved 28/03/2020].

Royal Commission On Tribunals Of Inquiry 1966 Report of the Commission under the Chairmanship of the Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Salmond. Presented to Parliament by Command of Her Majesty, November, 1966, London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office.

RUSSELL, R. R. (2013) Modernity, Community and Place in Brian Friel's Drama. Syracuse. Syracuse University Press.

SALGUERO SALGUERO, M. (2014) "La tarea crítica de la Filosofía jurídica en el espacio académico de la facultad de derecho", in JD Ruiz Resa (ed.) Política, economía y método en la investigación y aprendizaje del Derecho. Madrid: Dykinson, pp. 169-232.

SAVILLE, M. (1998) Opening Statement by Lord Saville. The Bloody Sunday Inquiry (Friday 3 April 1998). Available at https://cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/bsunday/ms030498.htm. [last retrieved 15/02/2017].

STOREY, J. (2018) Cultural theory and popular culture: An introduction. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315226866

TARUFFO, M. (2010) Simplemente la verdad. El juez y la construcción de los hechos. Madrid-Barcelona-Buenos Aires: Marcial Pons.

TEITEL, R. (2013) "Transitional Justice Genealogy", Harvard Human Rights Journal, Volume 16, 2003, pp. 69-94.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (2014), The Right to Truth in the Americas (OEA/Ser.L/V/II.152 Doc. 2 13 August 2014). Available at https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/reports/pdfs/Right-to-Truth-en.pdf [last retrieved 24/07/2020].

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human (2006), Rights Study on the right to the truth (E/CN.4/2006/91 8 February 2006). Available at https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G06/106/56/PDF/G0610656.pdf?OpenElement [last retrieved 24/07/2020].

The Public Administration Committee Publications of the UK Parliament (2005), First Report. Available at https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmpubadm/51/5105.htm [last retrieved 28/03/2020].

VAN BOVEN, Th. (2010) The United Nations Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law. United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law. Available at https://legal.un.org/avl/pdf/ha/ga_60-147/ga_60-147_e.pdf [last retrieved 24/07/2020].

VAN KOPPEN, J. PENROD, STEVEN D. (2003) "Adversarial or Inquisitorial?", in Van Koppen, J. Penrod and Steven D. (eds.) Adversarial versus Inquisitorial Justice. Psychological Perspectives on Criminal Justice Systems, Springer, Boston, MA, pp. 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9196-6_1

VYGOTSKII, L. (2010) Pensamiento y lenguaje. Barcelona: ed. Paidós.

WALSH, D. (1997) The Bloody Sunday Tribunal of Inquiry. A Resounding Defeat for Truth, Justice and the Rule of Law. Report for the Bloody Sunday, part 3, available at http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/bsunday/walsh.htm [last retrieved 15/02/2017].

WALSH, D. (2000) Bloody Sunday and the Rule of Law in Northern Ireland. Palgrave-MacMillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230514461

WILLIAMS, R. (1983, 1991) Writing in Society. London: Verso.

Published

2020-12-15

How to Cite

Ruiz Resa, J. D. . (2020). Legal Culture on Justice and Truth: The Tribunals of Inquiry about Bloody Sunday. The Age of Human Rights Journal, (15), 73–104. https://doi.org/10.17561/tahrj.v15.5777

Issue

Section

ARTICLES