In the wake of Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary renditions, and secret torture centres in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, Revenge versus Legality addresses the relationship between law and wild or vigilante justice; between the power to enforce retribution and the desire to seek revenge. Taking up a variety of narratives from the eras of Romanticism, Realism, Modernism and the Contemporary period, and including new theories to explain the interactions that occur between legalistic courtroom justice and the vigilante variety, Revenge versus Legality analyzes some of the main obstacles to justice, ranging from judicial corruption, to racism and imperialism. The book culminates in a consideration of that form of crime or lawlessness that poses the most serious threat to the rule of law: vigilante justice masquerading as legality. With its mixture of politics, literature, law, and film, this lively and accessible book offers a timely reflection on the enduring phenomenon of revenge.

This volume offers a new theoretical approach to the analysis of the law/revenge binary, and attempts to dismantle the common idea of revenge as lacking any legal, moral or rational dimension. In contrast, the book puts forward a model of a complex system of justice—which it terms 'vindicatory'—wherein vendetta constitutes an authorized action, the core of which does not (just) lie in vengeance but also in settlement procedures for peace—or 'composition.' The first part of the book ("Vindicatory Justice: Conceptual Analyses and Forerunners") seeks to identify the nature of vindicatory justice and to shed light on the structure of so-called vindicatory systems. In turn, the second part ("Mapping Vindicatory Justice") illustrates, using examples gathered from a range of sociolegal contexts, the dynamic relationship between composition and authorized revenge in vindicatory systems. Taken as a whole, the volume shows that applying a longue durée historical perspective to the study of revenge systems allows us to clearly recognize composition and authorized revenge as features of the same legal system, even though one of them may seem predominant (or more eye-catching) than the other in certain cultural settings.

"In Getting Even, Charles Barton contends that revenge can be a form of justice that is constructive and healing for our society. Our current judiciary system, he explains, denies both victims and the accused an active role in the legal proceedings and resolution of their cases, reducing them to bystanders in what is essentially their own conflict. Barton does not argue for an individual's right to take the law into his own hands, but does show that the courts should recognize the revenge motive as legitimate and rational within the rules of justice."--pub. desc.

Alma Bashears had fled Contrary, Kentucky, severing her Appalachian roots, to forget a brutal gang rape. Now she's a savvy attorney at a prestigious San Francisco law firm. When Alma's brother is charged with murder, she discovers that the prosecutor is the boy responsible for her rape. And a "white-trash hollow girl" is about to dispense a little country justice. Films rights have been sold to Warner Television Production.

This book addresses the problem of justifying the institution of criminal punishment. It examines the “paradox of retribution”: the fact that we cannot seem to reject the intuition that punishment is morally required, and yet we cannot (even after two thousand years of philosophical debate) find a morally legitimate basis for inflicting harm on wrongdoers. The book comes at a time when a new “abolitionist” movement has arisen, a movement that argues that we should give up the search for justification and accept that punishment is morally unjustifiable and should be discontinued immediately. This book, however, proposes a new approach to the retributive theory of punishment, arguing that it should be understood in its traditional formulation that has been long forgotten or dismissed: that punishment is essentially a defense of the honor of the victim. Properly understood, this can give us the possibility of a legitimate moral justification for the institution of punishment.​

Idealistic. Combative. Tenacious.The Bergman-Deketomis Law Firm is back on the case!Mike Papantonio introduced Nick "Deke" Deketomis and his associates in Law and Disorder, the powerful first installment of his legal saga. His new book, Law and Vengeance, has them pitted against an even deadlier foe. In Law and Vengeance, we find that several characters from the previous novel continue to fight the good fight: Nick "Deke" Deketomis is a world-class trial lawyer with the firm that bears his name. For decades, he battled some of the world's most reckless and corrupt corporations; but now he is confronted with a new level of corporate criminality.Gina Romano is a beautiful and determined woman who built her career as a criminal trial lawyerby believing she could play by the rules and still achieve justice. She is about to learn that the law of vengeance works with a different set of rules.Angus Moore is a gentle giant of a man, but a relentless pit bull of an attorney. He has no idea of the mortal danger his life is in after he takes the lead on the case against the world's largest arms dealer, Arbalest Corporation.In Law and Vengeance, the Bergman-Deketomis firm sets its sights on an unscrupulous weapons manufacturer and a corrupt Chicago police union.The law firm is accustomed to going to war with opponents who value big profits more than a human life, but this is uncharted territory even for them.Once again, Mike Papantonio interweaves the intricacies of his trade in trial law with highly developed character studies to deliver action that jumps off of the page. Law and Vengeance will leave you catching your breath as the story accelerates to its explosive conclusion.Mike Papantonio is a senior partner of Levin Papantonio. It is one of the largest plaintiffs' law firms in America, and has handled thousands of mass tort cases throughout the nation including pharmaceutical drug litigation, tobacco litigation, and securities fraud actions. "Pap" has received dozens of multimillion-dollar verdicts on behalf of victims of corporate corruption.

Retaliation is associated with all forms of social and political organization, and retaliatory logics inform many different conflict resolution procedures from consensual settlement to compensation to violent escalations. This book derives a concept of retaliation from the overall notion of reciprocity, defining retaliation as the human disposition to strive for a reactive balancing of conflicts and injustices. On Retaliation presents a synthesized approach to both the violence-generating and violence-avoiding potentials of retaliation. Contributors to this volume touch upon the interaction between retaliation and violence, the state’s monopoly on legitimate punishment and the factors of socio-political frameworks, religious interpretations and economic processes.