Cornell law professor Joseph Margulies wonders whether we can—and specifically whether he can—forgive President Trump for all of the bad things he has done. Margulies reflects upon his career of representing those people many regard as monsters and concludes that he cannot and will not join in demonizing President or anyone else. Margulies points out that there are no monsters; we create monsters so we can demonize others as different from “us.”
Cornell law professor Joseph Margulies discusses the public dimension of forgiveness and explains why politics are inherent in the act of forgiving. Margulies describes numerous examples of people whose arguably comparable transgressions resulted in society’s vastly different degrees of willingness to forgive them.
