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The first general theory of the influence of norms-moral, legal and social-on genocide and mass atrocity.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vi
Introduction 1
1. Norms in the World: Agents, Action Guidance, and Historical Inquiry 17
2. Necessary--and Even Proper: Moral Norms and the Explanation of Mass Atrocities 39
3. Better Never to Deliberate? Moral Norms and the Prevention of Mass Atrocities 59
4. The Etiology of Inhumanity: Legal Norms and the Explanation of Mass Atrocities 81
5. The Limits of Legalization: Legal Norms and the Prevention of Mass Atrocities 103
6. The Grammar of Violence: Social Norms and the Explanation of Mass Atrocities 125
7. Arresting Incitement: Social Norms and the Prevention of Mass Atrocities 145
Conclusion 171
Notes 177
Bibliography 237
Index 263

About the Author

Paul C. Morrow is John M. Meagher Human Rights Fellow at the Human Rights Center of the University of Dayton. He was previously a visiting researcher at Utrecht University.

Reviews

“This book is a beautiful example of a problem-centered philosophical approach that seeks to make a difference in how we understand our history, our present, and our future. At a historical moment when the norms undergirding democratic, rule of law, and equality values are under tremendous threat, Unconscionable Crimes is urgently required reading.”
—Christopher Kurtz, C. William Maxeiner Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley
 
 
“An extraordinary work, original and compelling in the analysis of mass killing: its causal origins and means together with the prospects of intervention and prevention. Morrow brings together philosophy, social theory, and legal history in a conceptual and, more unusually, practical confrontation with a terrible but recurrent feature of human conduct.”
—Berel Lang, Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the State University of New York, Albany

“[D]oes a great service in illuminating the norm-governed dimensions of atrocities and their prevention. [ . . . ] Morrow valuably catalogs and synthesizes insights from across the social sciences and philosophy. [ . . . ] His clear and parsimonious definitions of different kinds of norms and normative processes will be useful for scholars, and they can be applied beyond mass atrocities to the dynamics of human rights violations more generally. [ . . . ] Morrow’s prose is lucid, concise, and highly readable. [ . . . ] [H]is insights [ . . . ] may lower the likelihood of mass violence.”
—Perspectives on Politics


“Paul Morrow, a philosopher who is currently a Human Rights Fellow at the University of Dayton, has written a much-needed study of the relationships between moral, legal, and social norms and the all-too-human, in this case genocide and other mass atrocities. [ . . . ] [H]is book illuminates the weakness of much of the received wisdom about both prevention and explanation of why mass atrocities take place: norms lie at the heart of his account and they are as he tells the story part and parcel of atrocity.”
—Holocaust and Genocide Studies