On assassination

"As a concept, assassination is familiar, seemingly intuitive, and yet vexingly difficulty to define. The practice is widely, though not universally, condemned. Attempts to define assassination have included appeals to common sense, attempts to craft ever more technical definitions, and hand-wringing about legalistic obfuscations as states continue to carry out targeted killings. On Assassination offers an historically informed inquiry into the meaning of assassination as a political concept and political act from ancient Rome to the present. Adrian O'Connor proposes a new way of thinking about assassinations as murders that attack both the individual and the broader community they represent, using the Medieval concept of the king possessing two bodies. He also proposes four criteria for labelling a killing as an assassination that distinguishes them from other homicides and makes them particularly reprehensible, explosive, and worthy of prohibition. This is book provides context and a new framework for examining our current climate of political violence"--