Supreme histories and brittle democracies: Courts, law, and contested regimes of historicity

In the introduction to this special issue, we explore the role of courts in the production of competing regimes of historicity and examine what political formations and social contestations are generated in the process. Drawing on theoretical debates in anthropology, socio-legal studies and history, we analyse how the unique spacetime of liberal law obscures the historical contingency of legal processes and judgements. We propose that the perceived a-historicity of the liberal legal form can render courts privileged sites for the pursuit of rival claims to political sovereignty. By embedding their historical interpretations within legal rules and procedures, states and political interest groups can make powerful claims about who legitimately belongs to a nation, and whose historical narrations should be validated as true. We analyse historicity as a fundamentally political concept that illuminates how the histories of nations and peoples are reproduced and contested in courtrooms as part of conflicting bids for political supremacy.