The irreconcilable goals of transitional justice

Human Rights Quarterly

Volumn 30, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 95-118

  Leebaw, Bronwyn Anne ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK; POLITICAL INTEGRATION; POLITICAL THEORY; SOCIAL JUSTICE; VIOLENCE;

EID: 39749108954     PISSN: 02750392     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/hrq.2008.0014     Document Type: Article

References (107)

1. Press Release, Madeleine Albright, Bosnia in Light of the Holocaust: War Crimes Tribunals, State Department Dispatch (18 Apr. 1994), available at http://calbears.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1584/is_n16_v5/ ai_15282479.
2. The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies: Report of the Secretary-General, U.N. SCOR, U.N. Doc. s/2004/616 (2004), available at] http:// daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/NO4/395/29/PDF/NO439529.pdf.
3. Office of Transition initiatives, Office of Transition Initiatives Special Focus Areas, available at http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/ cross-cutting∥ograms/transition_initiatives/focus/humright.html.
4. New transitional justice institutions include the international Center forTransitional Justice in New York, the Harvard Project forJustice in Times of Transition, theTransitional Justice Project at Notre Dame School of Law, the War Crimes Study Center at UC Berkeley, the Transitional Justice Institute at the University of Ulster, and the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town.
5. See generally Kathryn Sikkink & Carrie Booth Walling, The Impact of Human Rights Trials in Latin America, 44 J. PEACE RES. 427 (2007).
6. Jack Snyder & Leslie Vinjamuri, Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice, 28 INT'L SEC. 5, 5 (2003-2004).
7. John Torpey, Introduction: Politics and the Past, in POLITICS AND THE PAST: ON REPAIRING HISTORICAL INJUSTICES (John Torpey ed., 2003).
8. Robert Meister, Human Rights and the Politics of Victimhood], 16 ETHICS & INT'L AFF. 91 (2002).
9. See Chris Jochnick & Roger Normand, The Legitimation of Violence: A Critical History of the Laws of War, 35 HARV. INT'L L.J. 49 (1994); LAW, VIOLENCE, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF JUSTICE (Austin Sarat ed., 2001); LEFT LEGALISM/LEFT CRITIQUE (Wendy Brown & Janet Halley eds., 2002); Ruti Teitel, Transitional Rule of Law, in RETHINKING THE RULE OF LAW AFTER COMMUNISM 279 (Adam Czarnota, Martin Krygier, & Wojciech Sadurski eds., 2005).
10. RUTI G. TEITEL, TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE 3-4 (2000).11 Id. at 3. Teitel defines transitional justice as encompassing legal responses to wrongdoings of successor regimes. Ruti G. Teitel, Transitional Justice Genealogy, 16 HARV. HUM. RTS. J. 69 (2003). For Elster, the definition is somewhat broader, encompassing private forms of retribution such as the chopping of hair as a penalty for consorting with German occupation forces. JON ELSTER, CLOSING THE BOOKS: TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE (2004).
11. ELSTER, supra note 11, at 3-23.
12. GARY JONATHAN BASS, STAY THE HAND OF VENGEANCE: THE POLITICS OF WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS (2000).
13. See ELSTER, supra note 11.
14. See CARLOS NINO, RADICAL EVIL ON TRIAL (1996); DAVID PION-BERLIN, THROUGH CORRIDORS OF POWER: INSTITUTIONS AND CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS IN ARGENTINA (1997); Jaime Malamud-Goti, Transitional Governments in the Breach: Why Punish State Criminals?, 12 HUM. RTS. Q. 1 (1990); MARK OSIEL, MASS ATROCITY, COLLECTIVE MEMORY, AND THE LAW (1997); Jose Zalaquett, Balancing Ethical imperatives and Political Constraints: The Dilemma of New Democracies Confronting Past Human Rights Violations, 43 HASTINGS L.J. 1425 (1992).
15. See Diane Orentlicher, Settling Accounts: The Duty to Prosecute Human Rights Violations of a Prior Regime, 100 YALE L. REV. 2537 (1991).
16. Carmen González-Enríquez, De-communization and Political Justice in Central and Eastern Europe, in THE POLITICS OF MEMORY: TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN DEMOCRATIZING SOCIETIES 218 (Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Carmen González-Enríquez, & Paloma Aguilar eds., 2001).
17. TINA ROSENBERG, THE HAUNTED LAND: FACING EUROPE'S GHOSTS AFTER COMMUNISM (1995); Luc Huyse, Justice after Transition: On the Choices Successor Elites Make in Dealing with the Past, 20 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 51 (1995);
18. Stanley Cohen, State Crimes of Previous Regimes: Knowledge, Accountability, and the Policing of the Past, 20 LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 7 (1995);
19. TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE AND THE RULE OF LAW IN NEW DEMOCRACIES (A. James McAdams ed., 1997).
20. NEIL J. KRITZ, The Dilemmas of Transitional Justice, TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE: HOW EMERGING DEMOCRACIES RECKON WITH FORMER REGIMES at xxix (Neil Kritz ed., 1995).
21. Id.
22. TEITEL, supra note 10, at 6.
23. ELSTER, supra note 11, at 237.
24. TEITEL, supra note 10, at 6.
25. Id.; See also Chandra Lekha Sri ram, Transitional Justice Comes of Age: Enduring Lessons and Challenges, 23 BERKELEY J. INT'L L. 506 (2005).
26. Naomi Roht-Arriaza, The New Landscape of Transitional Justice, in TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: BEYOND TRUTH VERSUS JUSTICE I (Naomi Roht-Arriaza & Javier Mariezcurrena eds., 2006).
27. See Zalaquett, supra note 15.
28. PRISCILLA B. HAYNER, UNSPEAKABLE TRUTHS: CONFRONTING STATE TERROR AND ATROCITY 160-61 (2001). Several scholars view the current discourse of reconciliation in a similar light, as favoring conservative trends. See, e.g.], Ruti G. Teitel, Transitional Justice Genealogy, supra note 11, at 84; Meister, supra note 8.
29. On the problem of false dichotomies in transitional justice debates, see esp. CHANDRA LEKHA SRIRAM, CONFRONTING PAST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS (2004); Sikkink & Walling, supra note 5; Roht-Arriaza, supra note 25.
30. THE POLITICS OF MEMORY, supra note 17.
31. Sikkink & Walling, supra note 5, at 434.
32. Orentlicher, supra note 16, at 2549.
33. See, e.g., The Secretary General, Report of the Secretary-General on The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, delivered to the Security Council, U.N. Doc. S/2004/616 (Aug. 23, 2004). However, in the post-Cold War era, transitional justice institutions were not necessarily developed in the aftermath of conflict, but as part of a process of resolving ongoing conflicts. TEITEL, TRANSITIONAL RULE OF LAW, supra note 9, at 291.
34. See Victor Peskin, International Justice and Domestic Rebuilding: An Analysis of the Role of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, J. HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE (1999), available at http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/rwandajha.html.
35. See HUMAN RIGHTS CENTER, INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW CLINIC, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA & CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, UNIVERSITY OF SARAJEVO, JUSTICE, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION: AN INTERVIEW STUDY OF BOSNIAN JUDGES AND PROSECUTORS (2000); Peskin, supra note 33; Snyder & Vinjamuri, supra note 6; Kinglsey Chiedu Moghalu, Image and Reality of War Crimes Justice: External Perceptions of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, 26 THE FLETCHER FORUM OF WORLD AFFAIRS 21 (2002); Peter Uvin & Charles Mironko, Western and Local Approaches to Justice in Rwanda, 9 GLOBAL GOVERNANCE 219 (2003);
36. Mark Drumbl adds that international criminal law also remains dependent upon modalities of domestic law. Mark A. Drumbl, Pluralizing International Criminal Justice, 103 MICH. L. REV. 1295, 1302 (2005), available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/ papers.cfm?abstract_id=587430.
37. For example, Peskin and Boduszynski demonstrate how political debate over question of whether or not to cooperate with the ICTY was manipulated to the advantage of nationalist leaders in Croatia (2003). Victor Peskin & Mieczyslaw P. Boduszynski, International Justice and Domestic Politics: Post- Tudjman Croatia and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 55 EUROPE-ASIA STUD. 1117 (2003).
38. See Charles Villa Vicencio, A Different Kind of Justice: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 1 CONTEMP. JUST. REV. 407 (1998); ALEX BORAINE, A COUNTRY UNMASKED: INSIDE SOUTH AFRICA'S TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION (2000); DESMOND MPILO TUTU, NO FUTURE WITHOUT FORGIVENESS (1999).
39. See HOWARD ZEHR, CHANGING LENSES: A NEW FOCUS FOR CRIME AND JUSTICE (1990); TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION OF SOUTH AFRICA REPORT (Susan de Villiers ed., Truth & Reconciliation Commission 1999) (1998) [hereinafter TRC REPORT].
40. INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL, TRIAL OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL 104 (1947).
41. Id. at 99.
42. Payam Akhavan, Justice in the Hague, Peace in the Former Yugoslavia? A Commentary on the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal, 20 HUM. RTS. Q. 737, 765 (1998). On the role of the ICC in relation to national reconciliation, see also Juan E. Méndez, National Reconciliation, Transnational Justice, and the International Criminal Court, 15 ETHICS & INT'L AFF. 25 (2001).
43. Interview with Gilbert Bitti, Senior Legal Adviser to the Pre-Trial Division, Chambers for the International Criminal Court (at time of interview Bitti was Chief of the Victims Participation and Reparations United for the International Criminal Court), The Hague, Netherlands (23 Jul. 2003) (transcript on file with author). On restorative justice at the ICC, see also Christopher Muttukumaru, Reparation to Victims, in THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT: THE MAKING OF THE ROME STATUTE 262 (Roy S. Lee ed., 1999).
44. See Zalaquett, supra note 15.
45. See MICHAEL IGNATIEFF, HUMAN RIGHTS AS POLITICS AND IDOLATRY 25 (2001).
46. David Mendeloff, Truth-Seeking, Truth-Telling, and Postconffict Peacebuilding: Curb the Enthusiasm?, 6 INT'L STUD. REV. 355, 363 (2004).
47. See Amy Gutmann & Dennis Thompson, The Moral Foundations of Truth Commissions, in TRUTH V. JUSTICE: THE MORALITY OF TRUTH COMMISSIONS (Robert I. Rotberg & Dennis Thompson eds., 2000); HUMAN RIGHTS IN POLITICAL TRANSITIONS: GETTYSBURG TO BOSNIA (Carla Hesse & Robert Post eds., 1999).
48. See JAMES L. GIBSON, OVERCOMING APARTHEID: CAN TRUTH RECONCILE A DIVIDED NATION? (2004); Tristan Anne Borer, A Taxonomy of Victims and Perpetrators: Human Rights and Reconciliation in South Africa, 25 HUM. RTS. Q. 1088 (2003); RICHARD A. WILSON, THE POLITICS OF TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION IN SOUTH AFRICA: LECITIMIZING THE POST-APARTHEID STATE (2001).
49. INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAI, supra note 38, at 99.
50. HAYNER, supra note 27. See Audrey R. Chapman & Patrick Ball, The Truth of Truth Commissions: Comparative Lessons from Haiti, South Africa, and Guatemala, 23 HUM. RTS. Q. 1 (2001) for a comparative analysis of the methodology used by truth commissions.
51. JÜRGEN HABERMAS, A BERLIN REPUBLIC: WRITINGS ON GERMANY (Steven Rendall trans., 1997).
52. See Thomas McCarthy, Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the USA: On the Politics of the Memory of Slavery, 30 POLITICAL THEORY 623 (2002).
53. JEFFREY HERE, DIVIDED MEMORY: THE NAZI PAST IN THE TWO GERMANYS 373 (1997).
54. Alexandra Barahona de Brito, Truth, Justice, Memory, and Democratization in the Southern Cone, in THE POLITICS OF MEMORY, supra note 17, at 156.
55. GIBSON, supra note 46, at 115.
56. Rachel Seider, War, Peace, and Memory Politics in Central America, in THE POLITICS OF MEMORY, supra note 17, at 177.
57. In a 2002 survey, "87.2 percent of Rwandan respondents claimed that they were either not well informed or not informed at all" about the ICTR proceedings. Alison Des Forges & Timothy Longman, Legal Responses to the Genocide in Rwanda, in MY NEIGHBOR, MY ENEMY: JUSTICE AND COMMUNITY IN THE AFTERMATH OF MASS ATROCITY 49, 56 (Eric Stover & Harvey M. Weinstein eds., 2004).
58. Seider, supra note 54, at 117.
59. Tim Judah, Serbia Struggles to Face the Truth about Srebrenica, Crimes of War Project (2005), available at http://www.crimesofwar.org/ news-srebrenica2.html.
60. Eric Stover & Harvey M. Weinstein, Conclusion: a common objective, a universe of alternatives, in MY NEIGHBOR, MY ENEMY, supra note 55, at 332.
61. Ernst Renan, What is a Nation? reprinted in NATION AND NARRATION 11 (Homi Bhabha ed., 1990).
62. GIBSON, supra note 46, at 162.
63. Gibson developed a measure of racial reconciliation using a series of indicators to evaluate levels of trust, comfort, and stereotyping of other racial groups. Id. at 166.
64. See Meister, supra note 8; Mahmood Mamdani, Reconciliation without Justice, 10 SOUTHERN REV. 22-25 (1996).
65. Mark Osiel, The Banality of Good. Aligning Incentives Against Mass Atrocity, 105 COLUM. L. REV. 1751, 1814 (2005).
66. Akhavan, supra note 40.
67. Osiel, The Banality of Good, supra note 63, at 1811.
68. Laurel E. Fletcher & Harvey A Weinstein, Violence and Social Repair: Rethinking the Contribution of Justice to Reconciliation, 24 HUM RTS. Q. 573, 601 (2002). For a similar argument, see Mamdani, supra note 62.
69. Orentlicher, supra note 16.
70. Political transition itself poses dilemmas for rule of law. For an argument about the unique role of transitional justice in mediating these dilemmas, see TEITEL, TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE, supra note 10, at 11-26.
71. Reed Brody, Justice: The First Casualty of Truth?, NATION, 30 Apr. 2001, at 25;
72. Andrew Valls, A Truth Commission for the United States? 7 INTERTEXTS 157, 25 (2003).
73. An exception is the report of Guatemala's truth commission, which evaluates US responsibility in relation to atrocities dealt with in the investigation, stating that US military assistance "had significant bearing on human rights violations during the armed confrontation," and that US anti-communism and the National Security Doctrine, were expressed in Guatemala as "anti-reformist, then anti-democratic policies, culminating in criminal counterinsurgency." GUATEMALAN COMMISSION FOR HISTORICAL CLARIFICATION, GUATEMALA MEMORY OF SILENCE: REPORT OF THE COMMISSION FOR HISTORICAL CLARIFICATION (1996), available at http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/ toc.html.
74. See OSIEL, MASS ATROCITY, COLLECTIVE MEMORY, AND THE LAW, supra note 15.
75. TRC REPORT 1998, supra note 37, at 113.
76. Gutmann & Thompson, supra note 45, at 41.
77. Id.
78. See TRC REPORT 1998, supra note 37.
79. Seider, supra note 54; VICTORIA SANFORD, BURIED SECRETS: TRUTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN GUATEMALA (2003).
80. Seider, supra note 54, 187; see also IMPUNITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AND PRACTICE 156 (Naomi Roht-Arriaza ed., 1995).
81. Khulumani v. Barclay Nat. Bank Ltd., 2007 WL 2985101 (C.A.2 N.Y., 2007).
82. Mendeloff, supra note 44. For an analysis of victimhood in US conceptions of transitional justice, see Meister, supra note 8.
83. Martha Minow, The Hope for Healing: What Can Truth Commissions Do?, in TRUTH V. JUSTICE, supra note 45. See also FIONA ROSS, BEARING WITNESS: WOMEN AND THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION IN SOUTH AFRICA (2003) on the testimony of women before South Africa's TRC.
84. TRC REPORT 1998, supra note 37, at 70-71, 64.
85. HAYNER, supra note 27, at 303.
86. Quoted in PAUL R. WILLIAMS & MICHAEL P. SCHARF, PEACE WITH JUSTICE? WAR CRIMES AND ACCOUNT-ABILITY IN THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA 21 (2002).
87. BASS, supra note 13, at 305.
88. Kenneth Roth, Human Rights in the Haitian Transition to Democracy, in HUMAN RIGHTS IN POLITICAL TRANSITIONS, supra note 45, at 95.
89. For a discussion of "articles of faith" in transitional justice policy, see Michael Ignatieff, Articles of Faith, 5 INDEX ON CENSORSHIP 110 (1996).
90. ETSTER, supra note 11, at 223.
91. Mendeloff, supra note 44.
92. ERIC STOVER, THE WITNESSES: WAR CRIMES AND THE PROMISE OF JUSTICE IN THE HAGUE 76, 105-09 (2005); See also Peskin, supra note 33.
93. See Zalaquett, supra note 15; MARTHA MINOW, BETWEEN VENGEANCE AND FORGIVENESS: FACING HISTORY AFTER GENOCIDE AND MASS VIOLENCE (1998); Albie Sachs, Judge of the Constitutional Court of S. Afr., Fourth DT Lakdawala Memorial Lecture, Institute of Social Sciences, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library Auditorium, New Delhi, India (Dec. 18, 1998); TERESA GODWIN PHELPS, SHATTERED VOICES: LANGUAGE, VIOLENCE, AND THE WORK OF TRUTH COMMISSIONS (2004).
94. For an analysis of the relationship between trauma and transitional justice, see IMPUNITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN INTERNATIONAL LAW AND PRACTICE, supra note 77, at 19-20; Helena Cobban, The Legacies of Collective Violence, BOSTON REVIEW (2002); IMAGINE COEXISTENCE: RESTORING HUMANITY AFTER VIOLENT ETHNIC CONFLICT (Antonia Chayes & Martha Minow eds., 2003); MY NEIGHBOR, MY ENEMY, supra note 58.
95. David Backer, Exit, Voice & Loyalty in Transitional Justice Processes: Evidence on Victims' Responses to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, paper presented at the annual conference of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, IL 16 (2004).
96. Id. at 18.
97. ROSALIND SHAW, INSTITUTE OF PEACE RETHINKING TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSIONS: LESSONS FROM SIERRA LEONE 130 (Special Report Feb. 2005).
98. Tim Kelsall, Truth, Lies, Ritual: Preliminary Reflections on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 5ierra Leone, 27 HUM. RTS. Q. 361 (2005).
99. See ALEX BORAINE & JANET LEVY, THE HEALING OF A NATION? CAPE TOWN: JUSTICE IN TRANSITION (1995).
100. Vanessa Pupavac, International Therapeutic Peace and Justice in Bosnia, 13 SOC. LEGAL STUD. 377, 385 (2004); See also ANDREW RIGBY, JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION: AFTER THE VIOLENCE (2001).
101. See Ignatieff, Articles of Faith, supra note 86; Kenneth Roth & Alison Des Forges, Justice orTherapy?, BOSTON REV. (2002), available at http://www.bostonreview.net/BR27.3/ rothdesForges.html.
102. Theodor W. Adorno, What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?, in BITBURG IN MORAL AND POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE 114 (Timothy Bahti & Geoffrey Hartman trans., Geoffrey Hartman ed., 1986).
103. Id. at 116.
104. The Secretary General, The Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies, supra note 32, at 8.
105. Thomas Carothers, The End of the Transition Paradigm, 13 J. DEMOCRACY 5, 7 (2002).
106. In a study of eleven civil conflicts, Long and Brecke concluded that even where "truth-telling" processes could threaten stability in the short term by countering denial, they still contributed to long term goals associated with reconciliation. WILLIAM J. LONG & PETER BRECKE, WAR AND RECONCILIATION: REASON AND EMOTION IN CONFLICT RESOLUTION (2003).
107. SRIRAM, CONFRONTING PAST HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, supra note 28, at 203.