Unjust History and Its New Reproduction—A Reply to My Critics

Demands calling for reparations for historical injustices—injustices whose original victims and perpetrators are now dead—constitute an important component of contemporary struggles for social and transnational justice. Reparations are only one way in which the unjust past is salient in contemporary politics. In my book, Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress, I put forward a framework to conceptualise the normative significance of the unjust past. In this article, I will engage with the insightful comments and try to address the concerns of the contributors to the symposium on my book. I will discuss (i) whether and in what sense my framework incorporates past-regarding duties, (ii) how it is different from causal interpretations of the relationship between past and present injustice, (iii) whether it can carve out a greater place for blame in our thinking about responsibility for (historical) structural injustice, (iv) whether such a responsibility needs to hinge upon an account of solidarity, and (v) how de-temporalising injustice can cast new light on immigration politics. In particular, I will stress and further clarify the importance that the notion of ‘structural debt’, which my book develops to reflect on historical responsibility, can play in thinking about what is owed to an unjust history.

Theory of Law, Jurilinguistics and Legal Language: A common task

This paper sets a clear interdisciplinary boundary of the joint work between the Theory of Law and Jurilinguistics, surrounding the role of legal language. The paper attempts to contemplate the challenges of the globalization of Law in the 21st century, and launches the challenge of the formation of a common place, to be established by political language and legal language, in order to favour the procedural and gradual development of Global Law. Thus, today, in the period of transition between international law and cosmopolitan law, the regulation of global life increasingly demanding of translation professionals. For this reason, when practising legal translation, their contribution is not limited to the transition from language a quo to language ad quem, but to the construction of classes that form a tertium, and it is from this residue of translation processes that it starts to open itself to the possibility of a legal expertise common to everybody starts to open up. Jurilinguistics has the task of collating and systemising these practices, to contribute to the Theory of Law, towards achieving the new scale of the project of modernity, that is, the formation of transnational justice.

Critiques on the Tribunals and The Hague Court

This critique is a review of heinous crimes. It assesses to connect with perpetrators, victims, people and institutions and change professed through the works of the Tribunals and The Hague Court and share the feeling with the concerned ones. The objectives of the paper are three-fold: (1) to study the situations of the investigation, prosecution and punishment on accountability; (2) to analyze the preference for justice: victors’ justice or victims’ justice; and (3) to access the critiques on violations of human rights and humanitarian law beyond the borders. Experiences on Transitional Justice, Human Security, and Human Rights among others feel touched, inspired and motivated to the author for this pioneer paper. This state-of-the-art paper is examined based on archival research, exchanging and sharing way forward with over 100 international publications and lessons-learned centric theoretical approach comprising snow-ball techniques. The study theorizes: (1) Retributive Justice Theory: Punishment is justified as perpetrator deserves for penalty, equivalent vengeance; (2) Utilitarian Justice Theory: Punishment is justified to mid-and-junior level perpetrators scooting-free to the top-most policymakers including Emperor Hirohito. Allied powers believed that Hirohito can only fight against the communism; (3) Denunciation Justice Theory: Punishment is justified by pressure of society that sends a clear message: offence is a heinous crime and sentencing a perpetrator is logically just; (4) Restorative Justice Theory: Punishment is justified as crimes of perpetrators hurt everyone and justice repairs the damage satisfying through accountability, reparation, rehabilitation and reconciliation; and (5) Transnational Justice Theory: Punishment is justified to operate outside a nation territory that penalizes the perpetrators as a crime of international concern. The Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals had virtually been victor’s justice with self-righteous fraud and lynching bodies. The Tokyo Tribunal never talks about bombings at Chinese cities. The U.S. and its axis powers discourage future aggressions accepting victor’s justice. The UN failed to restore peace and security. Cronyism was/is widespread. All Tribunals seemed pseudo justice bodies. People criticize these for being one-sided, inefficient, ineffectiveness, politicized, lengthy, very costly and unfair bodies. The U.S. and its satellite nations control both Tribunals and The Hague Court providing funds, instruments and staff. The Hague Court is a highly debated body with many flaws, targeting mostly poor and opponent African countries. Most grave crimes committed go unpunished. Thus, justice delivery appears as a sword in a judge's toupee. If The Hague Court is continuously influenced by powerful non-signatories of Statute, the relevance of its functions are hopeless. Justice becomes elusive for the innocent, weak and poor ones.

The ghostly presence of the disappeared in Argentina

This article analyzes the ghostly presence of the figure of the disappeared in Argentina in the period spanning from the military dictatorship—when the crime of forced disappearance was perpetrated systematically and on a massive scale—to the present. By examining a variety of written and oral sources (memoirs, print media, interviews, radio shows, photographs, documentaries, and literary works of fiction and non-fiction), the article historicizes that presence and explains it through the crime’s liminal nature, and the different meanings that the spectral figure acquires depending on the actors who perceive it and the changing political contexts. The article reveals how the ghostly presence of the disappeared challenges the tools used internationally in the field of transnational justice to deal with experiences of extreme violence and the specific policies for processing the crime of forced disappearance and representing the disappeared in Argentina.

A Critical Theory of Transnational (In-)Justice

This chapter develops a critical theory of transnational justice. Its normative basis is a democratic conception of justice as justification grounded in a constructivist conception of reason which is at the same time “realistic” when it comes to assessing the current world order as one of multiple forms of domination. In its critical parts, the chapter discusses a number of conceptions of justice that are parochial or positivistic in insufficiently questioning certain normative and empirical premises and thus miss the nature of forms of injustice beyond the state. In the constructive parts, it presents a reflexive argument for a discursive conception of justice. This theory is then situated in transnational contexts of rule and domination, arguing for principles and institutions of fundamental transnational justice.