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Robert Mcnamara And The Art And Law Of Confession: ‘A Simple Desultory Philippic (Or How I Was Robert Mcnamara’D Into Submission)’, Robert N. Strassfeld

Faculty Publications

This Article examines McNamara's "confession" and the public response to it within the context of an American tradition of confession in law and literature. Part I traces that tradition to the criminal conversion narratives and gallows speeches of colonial New England. Puritan society had clear expectations of what it took to make a good confession, and the Article identifies these rules for confession. It also examines the functions of confession in that society and argues that these confessions had several social consequences, including easing the consciences of those implicated in the criminal's punishment; bolstering civil and religious authority; warning the …