Prof. Orna Alyagon-Darr

Areas of interest

• Evidence Law
• Legal History
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Law
• Law & Society

Teaching

• Evidence Law
• Criminal Advocacy Practice

My main research interest is the social embeddedness of criminal procedure and evidence law. In my work, I go beyond the conventional truth-seeking rationale and approach criminal procedure and evidence law from a broad cultural and sociological perspective and within specific historical contexts. Doing so allows me to examine the role of legal proof within the broad social sphere and to focus on the cultural and social influences on legal evidence. This approach recognizes the agency of an array of social players (not exclusively legislators, lawyers, and judges) who actively engage in evidentiary discourse to gain symbolic capital, express and reinforce identity, and gain political prominence.
Based on the analysis of 157 primary sources, my book Marks of an Absolute Witch (Ashgate, 2011), demonstrates how evidentiary methods are shaped in the course of a symbolic struggle between variously situated social players. Evidentiary techniques are not necessarily forged through intentional or consistent design by lawyers and legal scholars but are, rather, amalgams of interrelated concepts and outcomes of sometimes competing and sometimes complementary interests. In particular, the book focuses on the professions of law, clergy, and medicine and finds clear affinity between the professional affiliations and the evidentiary positions of participants in the debate. It further demonstrates how diverse social players and groups employed evidentiary strategies to realize their goals and bolster their social standing. The book has been the subject of 12 scholarly reviews.
My next book, Plausible Crime Stories (Cambridge University Press, 2018) is not only the first in-depth study of the history of sex offences in Mandate Palestine but it also pioneers an approach to the historical study of criminal law and proof that focuses on plausibility. Doctrinal rules of evidence only partially explain which crime stories make sense while others fail to convince. Since plausibility is predicated on commonly held systems of belief, it not only provides a key to the meanings individual social players ascribe to the law but also yields insight into communal perceptions of the legal system, self-identity, the essence of normality and deviance and notions of gender, morality, nationality, ethnicity, age, religion and other cultural institutions. Using archival materials, including documents relating to 147 criminal court cases, this socio-legal study of plausibility opens a window onto a broad societal view of past beliefs, dispositions, mentalities, tensions, emotions, boundaries and hierarchies.
Other strands of research that I continue to pursue concern the social embeddeness of the penal and law enforcement systems, the procedural rights of the mentally ill in contemporary Israeli criminal procedure, therapeutic jurisprudence, the criminal responsibility of defendants suffering from complex medical syndromes, and the “emotional turn” in law.

Awards and fellowships:

*   PI Orna Alyagon Darr, ‘Prison Visitors in Mandate Palestine: A History of a Legal Transplant’: tripartite grant of 159,000 NIS per year by the Israel Science Foundation (2020).

*          “Excellency Award” by Sapir College (2021).

*          “Excellency Award” by Sapir College (2020).

*          “Excellency Award” by Sapir College, (2019).

*          Participant in the Beccaria Workshop by the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge (July 2019, full scholarship).

Books:

Orna Alyagon Darr, PLAUSIBLE CRIME STORIES: THE HISTORY OF SEX OFFENCES IN MANDATE PALESTINE (1918-1948) (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Orna Alyagon Darr, MARKS OF AN ABSOLUTE WITCH: EVIDENTIARY DILEMMAS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011).

Recent Articles:

Orna Alyagon Darr & Rachela Erel, The Conflicting Uses of Prison Visitation in Mandate Palestine, LAW & SOCIAL INQUIRY (2021).

Orna Alyagon Darr, The Values and Norms Underlying the Definitions of Sex Offenses in Israel: Past and Future, 14 Hukim (HU Law Review, 2020).

Orna Alyagon Darr, Proving Rape: Were the Reforms Successful in Uprooting the Rape Myths?, 50 Mishpatim (HU Law Review, 2020).

Orna Alyagon Darr, Arenas of Shame, Fear and Anger: History, Law and Rape in Mandate Palestine, 3 Mishpat, Hevra ve-Tarbut (TAU Law Journal, 2020).

Orna Alyagon Darr, The Public Pleads Not Guilty: Parental Suffering as a Source for Empathy toward the Accused, 12 Moznei Mishpat (Natanya College Law Review, 2019). 

Orna Alyagon Darr, Repressed Memories: Legal Evidence in Social Controversy, 18 MISHPAT U MIMSHAL (University of Haifa Law Review, Hebrew, 2017).

Orna Alyagon Darr, Narratives of ‘Sodomy’ and ‘Unnatural Offences’ in the Courts of Mandate Palestine (1918–1948), 35(1) LAW AND HISTORY REVIEW, 235-260 (2017).

Orna Alyagon Darr, Relocated Doctrine: The Travel of the English Doctrine of Corroboration in Sex Offense Cases to Mandate Palestine, 26(2) YALE JOURNAL OF LAW & THE HUMANITIES, 185-209 (2014).

Orna Alyagon Darr, Experiments in the Courtroom: Social Class and Proof in Early Modern English Witchtrials, 39 (1) LAW AND SOCIAL INQUIRY, 152-175 (2014).

Orna Alyagon Darr and Sarit Golan, Delirium Tremens: Alcohol Withdrawal Related Psychosis and Its Applicability to Criminal Defense, 11 ALEI MISHPAT, 49-106 (CLB Law Review, Hebrew) (2014).

SELECTED RECENT CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS:

“Infanticide in Israel, 1948-1968”, Annual Conference of the Israeli History & Law Association, Berg Institute & Yad Ben Tzvi, Jerusalem, October 4, 2021 (Panelist & Panel Organizer).

  “Classification of European and Native Bodies in the Prisons of Mandate Palestine”, Law and Society Association, Annual Meeting 2021, Chicago (+online), May 28, 2021 (Panelist & Panel Organizer).

   “Prison Visitors in Mandate Palestine” (Rachela Erèl), Beccaria Legacies Workshop, Cambridge University, July 7, 2019 (workshop participant).

“Sexual Offences and Ethnic Identity in Mandate Palestine: Perspectives from the Colonizing and the Colonized”, Legal History and Empires: Perspectives from the Colonized Conference (University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Barbados, July 11, 2018)

Orna Alyagon-Darr & Rachela Erèl: “Prison Visitors in Mandate Palestine”, Beccaria Legacies Workshop (Ono Academic College, April 24, 2018)

“Narratives of ‘Sodomy’ and ‘Unnatural Offences’ in Mandate Palestine”, Queer History Conference, Haifa Queer History Project (Haifa Feminist Institute, February 19, 2018)

“Shame, Shaming and Sex Offences in Mandate Palestine”, Shaming Conference, “Law and Business” IDC (July 2-3, 2017, accepted for presentation)

“Applying Terapeutic Jurisprudence in Criminal Proceedings”, The Annual Conference of Israeli Legal Clinics” (Hertzlia, February 15, 2017)

“Hidden transcripts of resistance in the colonial courtroom: an analysis of a rape case in Mandate Palestine”, Resistance and Empire, new approaches and comparisons, International Conference organized by ICS-ULisboa Research Group ‘Empires, Colonialism, and Post-colonial Societies, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon (June 27, 2016)

“Therapeutic Approach in Criminal Proceedings”, Law and Therapy Conference, College of Management, May 23, 2016 (roundtable discussant)

“History and Emotions in Trials of Sexual Offences in Mandate Palestine”, The Eleventh Annual Conference of the Israeli Association of Legal History, Yad Ben-Tzvi, Jerusalem (October 12, 2015)

“The Evidence that Dare Not Speak Its Name: Proof of Male-on-Male Sexual Offences in Mandate Palestine”, The Eighth Global Conference on Sex and the State / Persons and Sexualities, Mansfield College, Oxford, UK (September 26, 2015)

“Ethnic and National Identity in Cases of Sexual Offences in Mandate Palestine”, The Annual Conference of the Israeli Law and Society Association, University of Haifa (February 3, 2015).

Academia

ResearchGate

SSRN