The Legalization of Racism in a Constitutional State: Democracy's Suicide in Vichy France

This Article is a study of how a constitutional democracy can undermine itself from within, without resorting to illegal methods, and how institutional mechanisms for perpetuating democracy can be perverted to achieve the demise of the very goals they were designed'to safeguard. Vichy France is examined as a system of polysemic symbols created both constructively and destructively from the system of symbols of the regime that preceded it. Finally, Vichy's legacy is analyzed in terms of the recent trial of Maurice Papon, a trial which raised discomfiting issues about judicial constructions of collective memory.