Chapter One examines the historical and legal context that resulted in the abolition of the East India Company and the formal transfer of political sovereignty from the Mughal state to the British Crown. It focuses on the Uprising of 1857 and is arranged around two questions: How did the colonial state attempt to erase the memory of Mughal sovereignty and the popular character of the violence enacted in its name, and what role did mercy play in this story? The chapter positions the trial and punishment of Bahadur Shah Zafar II as a founding trial of colonial sovereignty which exposed both the extraordinary violence and the absolute limits of colonial sovereign power. A former sovereign would be transformed into a criminal and brought within the British imperial order, but for the sake of the future legitimacy of this political project, he could not be killed.

Lava Jato (Car Wash) was one of the largest corruption trials in the world. The Lava Jato taskforce launched a battle against powerful political actors using legal tools creatively and sought to garner public support by resorting to the media. The chapter examines three examples that illustrate these two strategies and unpacks their legal dimensions. It focuses on three decisions by Sergio Moro, Lava Jato’s most prominent judge: ordering the police to bring former president and 2018 presidential candidate Lula Da Silva in for questioning without a previous request, disclosing a recorded conversation obtained during an investigation against Lula, and making public a plea bargain agreement that incriminated Lula. The chapter outlines the political impact of Moro’s actions and examines them in light of current Brazilian legislation on transparency and accountability for judges’ behaviour. It finds that while transparency is a principle that informs criminal trials in Brazil, Moro pushed the existing rules to their limits to gain public support. At the same time, he attempted to influence public opinion by taking advantage of the discretion the Brazilian inquisitorial criminal system provides judges. The chapter also analyses the limitations of Brazilian legislation to prevent this kind of behaviour and points to the challenges of reforming it. It concludes that while courts’ mobilization of the media and creative use of legal tools may increase anti-corruption accountability, the costs of this strategy outweigh its benefits.

Chapter 5 focuses on the material and sensory conditions of Harare’s Magistrates’ Courts at Rotten Row. It specifically examines how human rights lawyers and their clients incorporated the material and sensory conditions in these courts into their courtroom performances, which drew attention to the shortcomings of the courts as spaces in which to the display state authority. While the Magistrates’ Courts were full of spatial and symbolic trademarks that aimed to highlight the power of the law, the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe after 2000 had severely damaged the courts’ material condition. The real and symbolic effects of this material decline undermined law’s authority. For human rights lawyers, these conditions were further indicative of the government’s preoccupation with law’s coercive rather than legitimating utility. Through visual, olfactory and auditory reminders of the horrific conditions in police detention, ZANU-PF demonstrated its control over activists' and lawyers' bodies and minds. Lawyers and their clients, however, also used these sensory dimensions to contest the state's authority. By calling attention to their dirty, damaged and smelly bodies in the dock, lawyers and defendants aimed to expose the decline in moral and professional conduct they observed within Zimbabwe’s judicial and police services.

By examining laws, legislation, and legal processes, it is argued in chapter five that the legal system in Bahrain is becoming an increasingly comprehensive tool of repression. Despite the increasing standardisation of law, the arbitrary nature of its execution during political unrest highlights the continuity of particularistic features of tribal law embedded within a standardised system.Also, legal repression has been facilitated by the emergence of specific legal structures and processes. As a consequence, laws have often been enacted as reactionary measures to con-trol dissent, long outliving their initial utility while simultaneously generating future grievances. The extent of impunity as an enabling factor for repression is also investigated and highlighted. In particular, a re-examination of historical sources sheds new light on the trial of the al-Madani killers in 1977, and the trial of the Khawalid shaykhsin the 1920s. While the emergence of ‘rule by law’ instead of ‘rule of law’ is implicit, this chapter sheds light on the nuances within even those repressive authoritarian legal processes.