Anatomy Of Guilt

What is guilt - is it a legal verdict, a state of mind or a moral idea? Why do we feel guilty? And is there such a thing as collective guilt, by which a whole community or even country may be judged?

A criminal barrister but also grown up a Catholic, Helena Kennedy QC cross-examines the notion of guilt from a range of perspectives - legal, psychological and political.

Guilt is both a public judgement and a private emotion, both legal and psychological. It's also highly political. Following recent Black Lives Matter insurgency across the UK the question of collective guilt - historical guilt - is animating debates around Britain's colonial past and demands for reparations. The example of Germany and the trials at Nuremberg following the Second World War are a model of how law has confronted, and struggled with, ideas of collective guilt. Today there is strong moral disagreement around how far back in time shared responsibility for historic crimes should extend -