“Democracy, Juries, and the Rule of Law,” 4/26 Co-Sponsored Colloquium with University of Michigan Prof. Sara Forsdyke

Co-sponsored with the Department of History, University of Michigan Josiah Ober Collegiate Professor of Ancient History Sara Forsdyke will round out Colloquium Series programming for the semester by turning to the juries of the ancient world to mediate on the question of whether or not a justice system reliant only on ordinary citizens could achieve the consistency required for the rule of law to prevail. The talk will be held on April 26 at 3:30pm in Jesse Hall 410. Anyone who would prefer to attend virtually, can live stream the talk here (YouTube) or here (Facebook, login req’d).

Abstract

Ancient juries had full power to decide both questions of fact (guilt or innocence) and law. This seminar will explore the question of whether a justice system that relied entirely on ordinary citizens could achieve the consistency that is required for the rule of law.

Josiah Ober Collegiate Professor of Ancient History at University of Michigan, Sara Forsdyke received her A.B. in Classics from Harvard University, M.A. degrees in Classics from Queen’s University (Canada) and Princeton University, and her Classics Ph.D. from Princeton. She is the author of Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Greece (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Slaves Tell Tales and Other Episodes in the Politics of Popular Culture in Ancient Greece (Princeton University Press, 2012), and Exile, Ostracism and Democracy: The Politics of Expulsion in Ancient Greece (Princeton University Press), and the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides (Oxford University Press, 2017). She is the recipient of the 2020-21 Michigan Humanities Award and a 2005-6 John Rich Fellowship from the Institute for Humanities, and served as an Invited Professor at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris during May 2012.