Episode 21: John Witt and Sam Moyn

Season 3 is here! In the first episode, John Fabian Witt, Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School, joins host David Schleicher to interview host Sam Moyn on his new book Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War. In the book, Sam interrogates efforts to make war more humane and the ramifications of this shift. We also discuss the chronology of when the American state began to craft more humane war; the risks that making any practice, such as war or driving cars, more humane might help legitimate it; and whether appeals toward making war humane are recent phenomena or cyclical occurrences. There’s also a sharp debate over methodology in legal history, for all you methodology heads out there, and some stern questions about what exactly Sam has against passion fruit panna cotta.  

Referenced Readings:

• Will Smiley & John Fabian Witt, To Save the Country: A Treatise on Martial Law, (2019).

• Justin Desautels-Stein & Samuel Moyn, On the Domestication of Critical Legal History, 60 History & Theory 2 (June 9, 2021).

• Samuel Moyn, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Revived War (2021).