ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of law in determining the contours of contested pasts. It takes as a case study the jurisprudence developed in the period 1999-2006 by the Irish Superior Courts regarding applications to halt the trial of offences of historical child sexual abuse. Concepts of ‘delay’ and ‘dominion’ that characterise this jurisprudence are shown to represent law’s attempt to create a linear notion of time. Linear time narrowed the limits of what could be deemed a ‘legitimate’ experience and thus narrowed the limits of history. Drawing on the work of Renisa Mawani, the chapter proposes an alternative paradigm for understanding the temporal ordering imposed in these cases; the Bergsonian notion of duration (durée). Thinking law’s time through duration opens up the possibility of understanding connections, adaptations and change as part of law’s ontology. It exposes the roots of the concepts of delay and dominion in law’s past; in myths about sexual violence victims and in the myth of the eternal sovereignty of the criminal law. Most importantly, it facilitates an understanding of law’s complex nonlinear relationship with its past, and points to the dangerous unpredictability of future legal responses to historical violence.
