Death, discourse and human rights: The construction of controversial deaths in the coroner's court

本研究将探讨法律的话语如何运作，以塑造有争议的死亡帐户，因为他们在验尸官的法庭重新叙述。通过民族志研究，它将试图检查死因叙事是否通过重新制定和重新解释死亡来使死亡脱离语境，利用人权话语突出某些因素，同时掩盖其他因素。（Brown和Halley，2002年），这项研究将通过引入专门语言，图像和概念（Evans，2005：1050）。借鉴“法律的意识”的概念（Merry，1990; Ewick & Sibley，1998），有人提出，这些专门的“解释性图式”适当的合法性赋予法律，以证明其在王权背景下的应用是公正的、合理的和不可避免的。解释性图式还包括一个意识形态框架，它由Hochschild（1979）所说的“框架规则”和“情感规则”组成，这些规则调节情感的产生、表达和管理。通过将情感视为法律的理性和合理性的“他者”，这一框架在死因裁判法院中发挥着监管功能。虽然存在着大量关于人权的理论文献，但“关于人权法在实践中如何运作的社会学研究相对较少”（Merry，2006：977）。自20世纪90年代末以来，人权学术的“人种志转向”在一定程度上弥补了这一弱点（科万，Dembour和Wilson，2006年; Wilson，2006年; Goodale，2006年）。然而，情况仍然是，权利要求的容量要求对人权的可能性和局限性的任何评估都必须植根于对“权利的社会生活”的经验性、背景性和基础性的调查。（Wilson，2006; Grewal，2014：3），人们如何在特定的环境中解释人权和与人权互动。尽管验尸官法庭在产生有争议的死亡事件的官方报道中发挥着核心作用，但它在很大程度上被忽视了“作为正义和不公正的场所”（Scott Bray和Martin，2016）。验尸官法庭中的行为者--家庭成员、律师和验尸官--如何解释人权话语并与之互动，这一问题很少受到学术界的关注，有些人认为这一问题早就应该得到关注（Baker，2016; McLaughlin，2007; Beckett，1999）。希望这项研究能引起法律的专业人士、社会学家和社会法律的学者的兴趣。还希望这项研究也将对关心参与性体制设计的决策者有意义。

This research will explore how legal discourse operates to shape accounts of controversial deaths as they are recounted in the coroner's court. Through ethnographic research it will seek to examine whether the coronial narrative decontextualizes death by reformulating and reinterpreting it, utilising the discourse of human rights to foreground certain factors whilst obscuring others.Informed by debates around the 'juridification' of human rights (Brown and Halley, 2002), this study will investigate the influence of law in "privatising" human rights discourse through the introduction of specialized language, images and concepts (Evans, 2005: 1050). Drawing on the concept of 'legal consciousness' (Merry, 1990; Ewick & Sibley, 1998), it is proposed that these specialized 'interpretative schemas' appropriate the legitimacy ascribed to law to situate its application in the coronial context as just, rational and inevitable. Interpretative schema also comprise an ideological framework made up of what Hochschild (1979) calls 'framing rules' and 'feeling rules' which regulate the generation, expression and management of emotions. Through casting emotion as 'other' to the reason and rationality of law, this framework performs a regulatory function in the coroner's court.Whilst there exists a wealth of theoretical literature on human rights, there is 'relatively little sociological research on how human rights law works in practice' (Merry, 2006: 977). This weakness has been remedied somewhat by the 'ethnographic turn' in human rights scholarship since the late 1990s (Cowan, Dembour and Wilson, 2006; Wilson, 2006; Goodale, 2006). However it remains the case that the capaciousness of rights claims requires any assessment of the possibilities and limitations of human rights be rooted in empirical, contextual and grounded inquiry into "the social life of rights" (Wilson, 2006; Grewal, 2014:3), how people in particular milieus interpret and interact with human rights.In spite of its centrality in generating official accounts of controversial deaths, the coroner's court has largely been overlooked "as a site of justice and injustice" (Scott Bray and Martin, 2016). The ways in which actors in the coroner's court - family members, lawyers and coroners - interpret and interact with human rights discourse has received scant scholarly attention with some suggesting it is long overdue (Baker, 2016; McLaughlin, 2007; Beckett, 1999).It is hoped that this research will be of interest to legal professionals, sociologists and socio-legal scholars. It is also hoped that this study will also be relevant to policy makers interested in participatory institutional design.