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Undoing the Legal Capacities of a Military Object: A Case Study on the (In)Visibility of Civilians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Martina Kolanoski
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Abstract

International law dictates that actors in armed conflicts must distinguish between combatants and civilians. But how do legal actors assess the legality of a military operation after the fact? I analyze a civil proceeding for compensation by victims of a German-led airstrike in Afghanistan. The court treated military video as key evidence. I show how lawyers, judges, and expert witnesses categorized those involved by asking what a “military viewer” would make of the pictures. During the hearing, they avoided the categories of combatants/civilians; the military object resisted legal coding. I examine the decision in its procedural context, using ethnographic field notes and legal documents. I combine two ethnomethodological analytics: a trans-sequential approach and membership categorization analysis. I show the value of this combination for the sociological analysis of legal practice. I also propose that legal practitioners should use this approach to assess military viewing as a concerted, situated activity.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , Spring 2017 , pp. 377 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2017 

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