The workshop will be an online event via Zoom. As a reminder, we ask that you RSVP for each workshop in advance so that we can circulate the paper and provide the Zoom link to the event. Please read the paper in advance.

Abstract:

Witness testimony in a judicial setting is seen as primarily a form of evidence, a means to inform a judicial body of the relevant facts in a given case. In this account, witnesses are only instrumental to the process of adjudication. This instrumental paradigm of testimony provides a useful account of how we think of witness testimony in courts today, but is it fit to describe witnesses’ role in earlier times as well? By offering a cross-cultural perspective on recurring problems in the study of ancient depictions of witnesses, the article recovers some lost chapters in the history of witnesses and testimony as legal ideas in the societies from which Western civilization emerged. According to the argument proposed in the article, the instrumental paradigm is a result of a radical change in the meanings of these ideas, a revolution that to date was untold.

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