This week Digging a Hole explores global legal theory and history to match up with Sam’s European adventures! We are lucky to be joined by two of our Yale colleagues, Lauren Benton and Rohit De. Among other things, we discuss Lauren’s project “On Small Wars: Legalities of Violence in European Empires” and the Yale Law and Modernization Project.

In the first episode of Season 3, John Witt 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.