Technology and Transitional Justice

Early literature in the field of transitional justice was dominated by debates over the meaning of justice, with retributivists arguing for the need for criminal prosecutions following mass human rights violations and advocates of restorative justice claiming that non-prosecutorial forms of justice like truth-telling are better suited for post-conflict societies. This debate was eventually settled, at least in the field, by a belief that post-conflict societies require both criminal prosecutions and truth-telling. More recently, the debate over justice has centred on the question of whether the field and practice of transitional justice has prioritized civil and political rights over economic and social rights. While this is a significant development in the field, it points to a more fundamental reality. Debates over justice are interminable. To try to sculpt justice to fit a preconceived definition limits its capacity to respond to the needs of survivors. This realization serves as the starting point for this project-that justice must remain open to re-interpretation for it to maintain its relevance in post-conflict societies. There is, however, a central problem in the field: Transitional justice implies a justice that is in the service of the transition. What this suggests, then, is that the debates over justice, or, the justice question, have been substantially circumscribed by the transition question, thereby limiting the possible definitions of justice. While the justice question has received a great deal of attention, this project suggests that if debates over justice are to indeed remain interminable, the more fundamental concern of the field should be the way the transition question has, in fact, shaped our theorizing about justice.

Research Handbook on Transitional Justice

Human Rights Quarterly, 2009

Fordham International Law Journal

THEORETICAL AND INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORKS TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN A NEW ERA Ruti G. Teitel* INTRODUCTION This Essay offers an evaluation of the status of transitional justice at the wake of the new century and millennium.1 ...

2006

This paper aims to review the process of transitional justice and its five strategies, which are prosecution, truth recovery, institutional reform, reparations, and reconciliation. The author first gives some background into transitional justice by outlining the history and development of it, as well as commentary about the advantages and disadvantages of the process. She then goes on to propose the use of holistic approach to transitional justice, giving an individual summary of the five strategies involved, including the aims, as well as issues surrounding each. To conclude, the paper will determine whether such strategies are best employed individually or as part of a holistic approach to transitional justice.

Social Justice Research, 2007

International Journal of Law in Context, 2007

Transitional justice discourse is generally accepted as having its foundations located in the theoretical, policy and practical implications of dealing with past human rights violations in societies that have experienced either repressive politics or violent conflict. Many theorists and policy-makers resolutely assume or defend the notion that ‘dealing with the past’ is where the debates about, and contribution of, the transitional justice paradigm uniquely lie.2 Understood in this way, transitional justice as a field of study has grown exponentially, comprising theoretical debates, the comparative assessment of domestic accountability schemes, international criminal justice, the study of truth commissions, and ethical-legal debate concerning the morality of compromise on accountability for gross and systematic violations of human rights.This foreword, building on the previous work of its authors,3 extends and expands our contention that transitional justice in this narrow sense mus...