The Political Trial

An examination before a court concerning the conduct of government affairs or somehow relating to government. An ordinary language definition: A trial occasioning considerable publicity and having political overtones, or even simply, a trial occasioning considerable comment. These definitions I do not find satisfying. Might it prove in any way interesting to draw distinctions or find similarities among the trials of the Chicago Seven for conspiracy, Charles Manson for murder, the Nuremberg defendants for war crimes, Socrates for corrupting the youth of Athens, Joan of Arc for heresy, witchcraft, and sorcery or the trials of Galileo, Thomas More, Martin Luther, Christ, Albert Dreyfus, Martin Luther King, or Doctor Spock? The Manson trial, a straight-forward murder trial remarkable only for its bizarre and bloody aspects, while it was still underway gave rise to comment by President Nixon himself. Insistence on law and order today weighs heavily as a political slogan. On this basis alone one might distinguish the Manson trial from another celebrated murder trial, that of Dr. Sam Sheppard in 1954 for the murder of his pregnant wife. Sheppard's conviction was invalidated twelve years later by the Supreme Court because of prejudicial news reporting that inflamed the public and precluded a fair trial. In the era of that trial law and order lacked national political appeal; even so, the case had its political side. The trial began two weeks before a hotly contested election in which both chief prosecutor and judge were

Criminology · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Stage (stratigraphy) · History · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Psychology

• Eldridge Cleaver Unthought

  Open Access•Patrick D Anderson•Philosophy Compass•2026

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