Právněhistorické studie / Legal History Studies (Charles University journal; below referred to as PHS or Journal) is a scientific journal listed in the international prestigious database SCOPUS. The journal is published by Charles University in Prague under the guarantee of the Department of Legal History of the Faculty of Law of Charles University. It is published by the Karolinum Press. The journal focuses on the field of legal history and related topics.
Issue 1 of the Journal was published by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences Publishing in June 1955. The Journal was initially published by the Cabinet of Legal History of the Czechoslovak Academy of Science (CSAV), later by the Institute of State and Law (CSAV) and then by the Institute of Legal History of the Faculty of Law of Charles University.
PHS is issued three times a year in April, August, and December and it presents original scientific works/papers as well as reviews, annotations and news from the scientific field of legal history. It also introduces annotated texts of a legal history nature. PHS accepts manuscripts from domestic as well as foreign authors. Manuscripts submitted by foreign authors are published in original language, namely in English, Slovak, German, French, Italian or Polish.
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PRÁVNĚHISTORICKÉ STUDIE, Vol 50 No 2 (2020), 103–113
Osobní nebo státní svědomí?! Melvillovo pozdní dílo Billy Budd aneb proces proti „švarnému námořníkovi“
[Personal or State Conscience?! Melville’s Late Work Billy Budd or the Process against “Dashing Sailor”]
Radim Seltenreich
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14712/2464689X.2020.20
published online: 17. 07. 2020
abstract
In this article the author deals with the Herman Melville’s fiction “Billy Budd” from the perspective of the current “law and literature”. So firstly he contextualizes this book in writer’s work whereas he also claims that it is a story that Melville wrote at the very end of his life. Further he makes us familiar with the legal problematics of the mutiny in the English law because exactly this plays a key role in the fiction. He pays his attention as well to the concrete naval mutinies in Spithead and Nore which passed exactly in the year 1797 in which Melville set his fiction. As his inspiratory source he mentiones as well the mutiny in American Navy on the USS Somers in the year 1842. In the further part of his study the author makes us firstly familiar with the plot of the fiction whereas he pays mainly his attention to the legal aspects of the process against the sailor Billy Budd which ends with the adjudgment death penalty. Finally he claims that the death of Billy Budd was not in accordance with the idea of the correct legal process and rather it was the sacrifice of Billy Budd in the interest of the preservation of the existing social order in the time of the war.
keywords: Melville; Billy Budd; law and literature
references (10)
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2. BLACKSTONE, W. The Commentaries on the Laws of England. Londýn: Garland Publishing, 1978, díl I.
3. BRADBURY, M. - RULAND, R. Od puritanismu k postmodernismu. Dějiny americké literatury. Praha: Mladá fronta, 1997.
4. COVER, R. M. Justice Accused. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975.
5. DOLIN, K. Sanctioned irregularities: martial law in Billy Budd, Sailor. Law Text Culture, 1994, No. 1.
6. DUGAN, J. The Great Mutiny. New York: Putnam, 1965.
7. FOUCAULT, M. Dohlížet a trestat. Praha: Dauphin, 2000.
8. MUNZAR, J. Melvillův odkaz. In: MELVILLE, H. Billy Budd. Praha: Vyšehrad, 1978.
9. POSNER, R.A. Law and Literature. A misunderstood Relation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994.
10. SCHMIDHÄUSER, E. Verbrechen und Strafe. Mnichov: C. H. Beck, 1995.
Osobní nebo státní svědomí?! Melvillovo pozdní dílo Billy Budd aneb proces proti „švarnému námořníkovi“ is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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ISSN: 0079-4929
E-ISSN: 2464-689X
