A Lockean Approach to Transitional Justice

2004 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Stacey
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Authoritarian Regime ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Hard Case ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Law Of Nature

Locke can speak interestingly to the problem of transitional justice, that is, how to deal withthose who committed human rights abuses under authoritarian regimes once those regimes democratize. The essay focuses mainly on the “hard case” of transitional justice, in which former members of an authoritarian regime retain significant capacity for violence, and so the ability to threaten the new polity if attempts are made to punish them. Locke's law of nature suggests that human rights abusers should be punished, although not at the expense of social stability.But it also grounds the apparently un-Lockean claims, consistent with some of Locke's occasional writings, that abusersquaeschewers of reason may be treated as beasts that do not enjoy natural rights, and that little account need be taken of the victims of such abusers. Using Locke's thought in this way both illuminates it and clarifies what is at stake in the debate about transitional justice.

scholarly journals The European Court of Human Rights, Transitional Justice and Historical Abuse in Consolidated Democracies

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 675-704
Author(s):  
James Gallen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
European Convention ◽  
Authoritarian Rule ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
European Court ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract In recent years, both transitional justice and the role of the European Court of Human Rights in dealing with historical abuses have evolved. Transitional justice has begun to address widespread or systemic human rights abuses outside of the contexts of armed conflict and authoritarian regimes. In three key recent judgments, El-Masri v Macedonia, Janowiec v Russia and O’Keeffe v Ireland, the Court has clarified and expanded its approach to addressing historical human rights violations relevant to transitional justice in significant, if inconsistent, ways. To date, there is no exploration of the relationship between transitional justice, historical abuse outside the contexts of armed conflict or authoritarian rule and the European Convention of Human Rights. This article seeks to address that gap by considering the potential opportunities and obstacles for the use of the Convention to address historical abuse in consolidated democracies as a part of transitional justice.

Tracking Down the Missing Financial Link in Transitional Justice

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-92
Author(s):  
Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Economic Considerations ◽  
Choice Approach

This article argues that lenders providing financial assistance to authoritarian regimes should be held responsible for complicity if they knew or should have known that they would facilitate human rights abuses. Discussing the lenders’ role in a transitional justice context leads to a broadening of legal and institutional tools to channel this responsibility. This article starts by critically assessing the micro criteria traditionally used to understand the causal link between finance and human rights abuses, suggesting that a macro (i.e. holistic, interdisciplinary and casuistic) approach considering structures, processes and dynamics of sovereign financing should be applied when interpreting this link. It also explains how that traditional view is being challenged. A rational choice approach is taken to explain the most salient financial features of large-scale campaigns of gross human rights violations in order to understand the real relevance of funds in contexts of criminal regimes. The legal bases of responsibility for complicity are then discussed, separately presenting the arguments applied to private, multilateral and bilateral lenders. It also outlines how the missing financial link could be integrated into the domain of transitional justice, presenting, elaborating and assessing enforceability of concrete mechanisms to channel financial complicity in order to attain transitional goals. Finally, concluding remarks and challenges on the relationship between financial complicity and transitional justice are presented; and policy and economic considerations are made to better understand the real implications that incorporating the financial dimension into the transitional justice universe could have for a country.

scholarly journals Thinking Systemically About Transitional Justice, Legal Systems, and Resilience

2021 ◽  
pp. 530-550
Author(s):  
Janine Natalya Clark
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Social Environments ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Resilience Thinking ◽  
Systemic Impact ◽  
Resilience Framework ◽  
The Impact

Transitional justice refers to the set of judicial and non-judicial processes that societies may use to deal with legacies of past human rights abuses and atrocities. While the field is rapidly expanding, to date there are almost no systematic analyses of transitional justice within a resilience framework, or vice versa. The purpose of this chapter is to address that gap and to demonstrate why resilience is highly relevant for transitional justice theory and practice. It argues that resilience thinking can enhance the impact of transitional justice on the ground, by contributing to the development of more ecological approaches to dealing with the past that locate individuals within their broader social environments. The chapter also reflects on the conceptual and empirical utility of resilience as a concept that opens up a space for analyzing the wider societal and systemic impact of legal systems more generally.

Linking Transitional Justice and Human Rights

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Waltz
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Arab Spring ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Human Rights Standards ◽  
Economic Injustice ◽  
The Arab Spring

Chapter 3, by Susan Waltz, addresses several of these challenges as well as other themes in a distinct way, drawing upon experiences before and after the Arab Spring from several countries in the region including Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. She first draws attention to the apparent gaps between a set of universal human rights standards enshrined in international treaties, the practice of transitional justice with its focus on gross human rights abuses, and the expectations which have been raised of transitional justice, including of addressing questions of economic injustice. She then interrogates different facets of the problem of “impact” of transitional justice.

scholarly journals On Corporate Responsibility, Human Rights, and Transitional Justice: Quo Vadis?

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 324-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruti Teitel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Corporate Responsibility ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
Supreme Court Decision ◽  
Court Decision ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Quo Vadis

The 2018 ASIL panel on the question of corporate responsibility and human rights, and in particular, my remarks on corporate responsibility and transitional justice, preceded a long-awaited United States Supreme Court decision on the question of whether foreign corporate responsibility for human rights abuses belonged in United States courts ending in a closely decided vote—dividing sharply along political lines, with the Court conservatives in splintered opinions deciding against such liability. A forceful dissent by the four liberals on the Court would have allowed the Alien Tort Claims Act (ACTA) claim to go forward.

Haunting and transitional justice: On lives, landscapes and unresolved pasts

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-22
Author(s):  
Cheryl Lawther
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Transmission Of Trauma

This article explores practices of haunting and ghosting after conflict-related loss. This is not to suggest a focus on the occult or the paranormal, but to use these phenomena as a prism through which to understand the intersection between unresolved pasts and the transmission of trauma post-conflict. As Michael Levan notes, trauma lingers ‘unexorcisably in the places of its perpetration, in the bodies of those affected, in the eyes of the witnesses, and in the politics of memory’. The ghost, according to Avery Gordon ‘is the principal form by which something lost or invisible or seemingly not there makes itself known or apparent to us’. In this article I argue for three conceptualisations of haunting when past traumas remain unaddressed: the haunting of lost lives, the haunting of landscape, and the haunting presence of the unresolved past. The article focuses on Northern Ireland, a post-conflict jurisdiction described as being haunted by a ‘conflict calendar in which every day is an anniversary’ and extensive fieldwork with victims and survivors of the conflict. The article concludes by arguing that the presence of ghosts and the experience of haunting represent a ‘call to action’ in the quest to deal with a legacy of violent conflict and human rights abuses.

scholarly journals Religion & Transitional Justice

Daedalus ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 149 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-200
Author(s):  
Colleen Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Religious Actors ◽  
Religion And Democracy ◽  
Constitutive Element

Transitional justice refers to the process of dealing with human rights abuses committed during the course of ongoing conflict or repression, where such processes are established as a society aims to move toward a better state, and where a constitutive element of that better state includes democracy. A philosophical theory of transitional justice articulates what the moral criteria or standards are that processes of transitional justice must satisfy to qualify as just responses to past wrongdoing. This essay focuses on the roles of religion in transitional justice. I first consider the multiple and conflicting roles of religion during periods of conflict and repression. I then argue against conceptualizing transitional justice in a theologically grounded manner that emphasizes the importance of forgiveness. Finally, I discuss the prominent role that religious actors often play in processes of transitional justice. I close with the theoretical questions about authority and standing in transitional contexts that warrant further examination, questions that the roles of religious actors highlight. Thinking through the relationship between religion and democracy from the perspective of transitional justice is theoretically fruitful because it sheds more light on additional dimensions to the issue of authority than those scholars of liberal democracy have traditionally taken up.

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