What can we learn from the legal cases of Stephen Lawrence and Louise Woodward?

How do the legal system and the media contribute to a collective understanding of class, nation, race and gender?

In this book, Siobhan Holohan explores media representations of law and order in the context of notions of multi-culturalism and victim-centred politics. Two high profile cases – the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the US trial of the British au-pair, Louise Woodward – are examined. Holohan argues that the stories built up around Woodward and Lawrence - the organization of public discourse around a sacrificial figure - have contributed to exclusionary patterns of social order.

The book offers a perceptive account of what makes some criminal legal cases prone to scrutiny and spectacle and provides a vivid illustration of the presence of power relations in legal decisions. In conclusion, the author draws on the model of the Macpherson report to propose a more inclusive form of social and legal judgement that takes into account social inequalities.

Contents: Introduction: society, regulation and representation; Gender and Power: The family as moral centre of social organization; Symbolic transformations; The scapegoat mechanism; Reading Racism: Ethnic subjectivity and identity reformation; The violence of discourse; Criminal justice and society; Conclusion: toward an ethic of representation; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author: Dr Siobhan Holohan is at Keele University, UK

Reviews: ‘This is a work of remarkable intellectual economy and analytic clarity. Holohan makes a very strong case for cultural, socio-economic and psychoanalytic readings of media work in representing and confirming the effects of gender/class and racialized norms of inclusion/exclusion in the UK and USA. Her book must interest anyone in criminology and the political economy of gender and race as it appears in two very large scenarios of sacrifice and celebrity that surprisingly tie Woodward and Lawrence to the cases of O.J. Simpson and Diana, Princess of Wales.’
John O’Neill, York University, Canada

‘…thoughtful, well-written and thorough…in addition to being a valuable resource for researchers, the text could serve many purposes in graduate education. It would be beneficial in any class that focused on social construction and media, as well as any courses that focus on race, class and/or gender.’ International Criminal Justice Review