This book presents an empirically rigorous and theoretically sophisticated account of political trials.

1. Political trials in theory and history Jens Meierhenrich and Devin O. Pendas; 2. The trial of Socrates as a political trial: explaining 399 BCE Josiah Ober; 3. The trial and crucifixion of Jesus: a formal model Ron E. Hassner and Kenneth Sexauer; 4. Jan Hus in the medieval ecclesiastical courts Thomas A. Fudge; 5. The French Revolutionary trials Laurence Winnie; 6. The Soviet Union, the Nuremberg Trials, and the politics of the postwar moment Francine Hirsch; 7. 'Brown v. Board of Education': private civil litigation as a political trial Mark Tushnet; 8. The Eichmann trial in law and memory Devin O. Pendas; 9. In the theater of the rule of law: performing the Rivonia trial in South Africa, 1963-4 Jens Meierhenrich and Catherine M. Cole; 10. China's Gang of Four trial: the law v. the laws of history Alexander C. Cook; 11. Anger, honor, and truth: the political prosecution of Neopolitan organized crime Marco Jacquemet; 12. 'This following orders thing is very relative': ascriptions and performances of responsibility in the Causa ESMA, 1983-7 Christiane Wilke; 13. The Microsoft case as a political trial William H. Page and John E. Lopatka; 14. The trials of Khodorkovsky in Russia Richard Sakwa; 15. Nashiri in Gitmo: the wages of legitimacy in trials before the Guantanamo Military Commissions Lawrence Douglas.