Apology Subverted: The Commodification of Apology

By L. Taft. 2000

129 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We are living in a time in which extraordinary, public acts of contrition have become commonplace, so frequent that one pundit describes the atmosphere that pervades our culture as "apology mania."' As citizens of the United States we have been witnesses to our President's evolving apology in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, a tawdry affair that led to his impeachment in the House of Representatives. The public sphere overflows with discourse about President Clinton's apologies; his first attempt at expressed contrition was viewed as woefully inadequate and his later attempts condemned by many as insincere and politically driven. What a literature search reveals as a topic previously rarely considered has now become a national conversation. Against this historic backdrop, I join the conversation. Here I examine apology and, more particularly, the role of apology in the context of civil mediation. Apology is not a stranger to the law. In fact, the role of apology has been discussed in a growing body of case law,' and there are numerous legal articles addressing its role in litigation, particularly in the context of

Subfields: Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science

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