With increasing frequency, the United States Supreme Court has faced questions pertaining to the Constitutional rights of parents. Contemporary conflicts between states’ authority and parents’ rights to shape the moral education of children are manifestations of a tension in liberal political thought. Although liberalism assigns responsibility for the education of children to private institutions, such as families and churches, there is a public need in liberal regimes for citizens to possess certain skills, habits, and beliefs. When these competing interests have come before the Supreme Court, its rhetoric has not always done justice to the importance of both interests. Here, I examine the Court’s nineteenth-century jurisprudence on polygamy, its important early twentieth-century cases on the family, and a selection of recent cases relating to the education of children. I conclude that the Supreme Court has in recent years put too little emphasis on the legitimate interests of states in shaping the moral education of children. / text

This master thesis asks the question “Why are confessions so convincing?”. To provide an answer, I use Austin’s speech act theory to investigate how confessions work within the context of Swedish law. This model was fit for purpose; however, the theory lacks a temporal dimension necessary to understand the mechanisms in play when confessions convince someone. To account for this discrepancy, I use Derek Beach’s process tracing. Given the sometimes-strained relation between law and rhetoric I completed extensive reviews of literature on judicial rhetoric, both historically and contemporary. The current literature suggests that Swedish scholars of law use rhetorical theories more often than expected, however, Swedish scholars of rhetoric seem to interact with law a lot less. One of the findings of this thesis is that a rhetorical perspective, and the perspective from someone outside the field of law, may add significantly to understandings of confessions. Confessions are culturally important and often misunderstood, initially perceived as an unavoidable part of human nature. However, as discussed in this text, confessions are not rooted in human nature, but in cultural conventions, with a historical tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. When researching confessions in general, this paper identifies tensions between three kinds of confessions: religious confessions, juridical confessions, and psychotherapeutic confessions. Ten Swedish judges were interviewed, and 1599 court decisions were analyzed for this paper. Through this material an agreed upon ritual in which confessions become convincing appears. This ritual is however not the only reason why confession become convincing. Confessions can be detailed, coherent, and nuanced, which makes them more believable. The power to convince through confession consists of a complex net of different mechanisms, some based in the law system, and some based in rhetoric.

Au XVIe siècle, nous assistons à deux types de récits criminels : dans la presse, les faits divers, produits sous la forme de « canards », et dans la littérature, les histoires tragiques, forme narrative brève essentiellement véridique et à tonalité pathétique. Lorsque Pierre Boaistuau, appelé aussi Launay, publie Les Histoires tragiques, il sélectionne six récits parmi les Novelle de Matteo Bandello. Le travail de Boaistuau ne se limite pas à la traduction de ces textes mais également à la fondation d’un genre qu’est l’histoire tragique. François de Belleforest, son ami, en poursuit la traduction et en varie les sources ; il publie entre 1559 et 1582 sept volumes d’histoires tragiques. Notre étude porte sur la justice, un thème clé pour comprendre les textes de ces deux auteurs. En effet, leurs récits révèlent un intérêt particulier pour les différentes formes de justice (humaine, naturelle et divine), pour le procès judiciaire et ses protagonistes. Nous analysons tous ces points ainsi que le thème de la transgression à travers différents crimes, principalement les crimes de paillardise (« macquerellage », rapt, viol et adultère). Notre réflexion porte également sur le châtiment et ses fonctions ainsi que sur le comportement du condamné au moment de son exécution. Enfin, nous nous intéressons aux stratégies discursives déployées par nos auteurs notamment à la rhétorique judiciaire et à la rhétorique délibérative. Les enjeux soulevés à travers l’étude du discours rhétorique permettent d’explorer les liens entre le discours judiciaire et le discours politique et donc entre justice et politique. Somme toute, la dernière partie de notre travail permet de cerner les rapports entre rhétorique, justice et politique. / In the sixteenth century, two types of criminal narratives predominate: short news items in the press, printed separately as canards, and brief narrative literary forms that constitute the tragic story genre, combining truth with a tone of pathos. When Pierre Boaistuau, also called Launay, publishes Les Histoires tragiques, he selects six stories from Matteo Bandello’s Novelle. Boaistuau's work is not limited to the translation of these texts but also establishes the tragic story genre. His friend François de Belleforest continues the translation and varies the sources; between 1559 and 1582 he published seven volumes of tragic stories. My thesis focuses on justice, a key theme for understanding the texts of these two authors. Indeed, their stories reveal a particular interest in the different forms of justice (human, natural and divine), in the judicial process and in its protagonists. I analyze all these points as well as the theme of transgression through an examination of various crimes, mainly crimes of debauchery ("macquerellage" –sex trafficking–, abduction, rape and adultery). I also consider the different functions of punishment as well as the behavior of the convicted person at the time of execution. Finally, I am interested in the discursive strategies deployed by these authors, including judicial rhetoric and deliberative rhetoric. The issues raised through the study of rhetoric make it possible to explore the links between judicial discourse and political discourse and therefore between justice and politics. The summative, final part of our work further elucidates the relationships between rhetoric, justice and politics.