Transitional Justice in Aparadigmatic Contexts


Book Description

This book explores the practical and theoretical opportunities as well as the challenges raised by the expansion of transitional justice into new and ‘aparadigmatic’ cases. The book defines transitional justice as the pursuit of accountability, recognition and/or disruption and applies an actor-centric analysis focusing on justice actors’ intentions of and responses to transitional justice. It offers a typology of different transitional justice contexts ranging from societies experiencing ongoing conflict to consolidated democracies, and includes chapters from all types of aparadigmatic contexts. This covers transitional justice in states with contested political authority, shared political authority, and consolidated political authority. The transitional justice initiatives explored by the wide range of contributors are those of Afghanistan, Belgium, France, Greenland/Denmark, Libya, Syria, Turkey/Kurdistan, UK/Iraq, US, and Yemen. Through these aparadigmatic case studies, the book develops a new framework that, appropriate to its expanding reach, allows us to understand the practice of transitional justice in a more context-sensitive, bottom-up, and actor-oriented way, which leaves room for the complexity and messiness of interventions on the ground. The book will appeal to scholars and practitioners in the broad field of transitional justice, as represented in law, criminology, politics, conflict studies and human rights. The Introduction, Chapter 8 and the Concluding Remarks of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.




Transitional Justice in Aparadigmatic Contexts


Book Description

"This book explores the practical and theoretical opportunities as well as the challenges raised by the expansion of transitional justice into new and 'aparadigmatic' cases. The book defines transitional justice as the pursuit of accountability, recognition and/or disruption and applies an actor-centric analysis focusing on justice actors' intentions of and responses to transitional justice. It offers a typology of different transitional justice contexts ranging from societies experiencing ongoing conflict to consolidated democracies, and includes chapters from all types of aparadigmatic contexts. This covers transitional justice in states with contested political authority, shared political authority, and consolidated political authority. The transitional justice initiatives explored by the wide range of contributors are those of Afghanistan, Belgium, France, Greenland/Denmark, Libya, Syria, Turkey/Kurdistan, UK/Iraq, US, and Yemen. Through these aparadigmatic case studies, the book develops a new framework that, appropriate to its expanding reach, allows us to understand the practice of transitional justice in a more context-sensitive, bottom-up, and actor-oriented way, which leaves room for the complexity and messiness of interventions on the ground. The book will appeal to scholars and practitioners in the broad field of transitional justice, as represented in law, criminology, politics, conflict studies and human rights"--




Clarifying the Past


Book Description

Clarifying the Past provides a comprehensive analysis of state-sponsored historical commissions operating in conflicted and divided societies, developing a theoretical and methodological framework within the historical dialogue paradigm, key to understanding the work of such commissions. The theoretical and methodological framework is complemented with an extensive empirical analysis of 27 historical commissions that operated in different social and political contexts from 1990s to the present. The detailed examination of these cases gives a broad perspective into the potential capacities of historical commissions in different settings. Although only sampling the most recent cases, this volume shows how the steady increase of the number of historical commissions indicates that we are not dealing with a marginal phenomenon. The increased recognition of the potential of historical commissions to address the legacies of contested pasts and potential introduction of such commissions to transitional justice, makes this book highly relevant. This book has been written with the objective of deepening and broadening the existing knowledge on state-sponsored historical commissions. Its intended audiences are scholars and practitioners in the fields of historical theory, public history, and historical dialogue, transitional justice, peace and conflict studies.




Courtroom Ethnography


Book Description

This book provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary examination of courtroom ethnography. This collection gathers international researchers from a multitude of disciplines to explore three central themes: doing courtroom ethnography, ethnographic studies of the courtroom, and contemporary and critical aspects of courtroom ethnography. It highlights the nuances, negotiations, and issues that ethnographic researchers face in the courtroom. It covers topics like how to study legal actors and lay participants, legal and social processes, norms and rulings, digitalisation and vulnerability, gender and inequalities, and more across a range of legal cases. It presents the current state of the art of the field of courthouse ethnography with a discussion of methodological challenges, modes of access and best practice examples. With practical tips/questions at the end of each chapter, it speaks to students and above in subjects including sociology, criminology, law, geography, sociology of law, conflict studies, socio-legal studies and beyond.




Transitional Justice and Education


Book Description

After periods of conflict and authoritarianism, educational institutions often need to be reformed or rebuilt. But in settings where education has been used to support repressive policies and human rights violations, or where conflict and abuses have resulted in lost educational opportunities, legacies of injustice may pose significant challenges to effective reform. Peacebuilding and development perspectives, which normally drive the reconstruction agenda, pay little attention to the violent past. Transitional Justice and Education: Learning Peace presents the findings of a research project of the International Center for Transitional Justice on the relationship between transitional justice and education in peacebuilding contexts. The book examines how transitional justice can shape the reform of education systems by ensuring programs are sensitive to the legacies of the past, how it can facilitate the reintegration of children and youth into society, and how education can engage younger generations in the work of transitional justice.




Violence, Law and the Impossibility of Transitional Justice


Book Description

The field of transitional justice has expanded rapidly since the term first emerged in the late 1990s. Its intellectual development has, however, tended to follow practice rather than drive it. Addressing this gap, Violence, Law and the Impossibility of Transitional Justice pursues a comprehensive theoretical inquiry into the foundation and evolution of transitional justice. Presenting a detailed deconstruction of the role of law in transition, the book explores the reasons for resistance to transitional justice. It explores the ways in which law itself is complicit in perpetuating conflict, and asks whether a narrow vision of transitional justice – underpinned by a strictly normative or doctrinal concept of law – can undermine the promise of justice. Drawing on case material, as well as on perspectives from a range of disciplines, including law, political science, anthropology and philosophy, this book will be of considerable interest to those concerned with the theory and practice of transitional justice.




Beyond Transitional Justice


Book Description

Beyond Transitional Justice reflects upon the state of the field (or non-field) of transitional justice in the current conjuncture, as well as identifying new possibilities and challenges in the fields with which transitional justice overlaps (such as human rights, peacebuilding, and development). Chapters intervene at the cutting edge of contemporary transitional justice research, addressing key theoretical and empirical questions and covering critical, international, interdisciplinary, theoretical, and practice-oriented content. In particular, the notion of transformative justice is discussed in light of the emerging scholarship defining and applying this concept as either an approach within or an alternative to transitional justice. The book considers the extent to which transformative justice as a concept adds value to scholarship on transitional justice and related areas and asks what the future might hold for this area as a field – or non-field. A timely intervention, Beyond Transitional Justice is ideal reading for scholars and students in the fields of human rights, peace and conflict studies, international law, critical legal theory, development studies, criminology, and victimology.




Stabilising the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa


Book Description

This book examines the changing dynamics of stabilisation efforts in the Middle East and North Africa. Written by recognised scholars and practitioners in the field, this volume provides a rich overview of the broader spectrum of stabilisation. The topics range from a comprehensive set of lessons learned in Afghanistan and Iraq to transitional justice and reconciliation efforts in Tunisia and international attempts to protect the region’s cultural heritage. Ultimately, this edited collection presents a comprehensive look at the attempts to increase stability in the MENA region.




The Transitional Justice Citizen


Book Description

Building a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the limits of transitional justice theory in historically understudied regions, this innovative book proposes a new concept of the transitional justice citizen as both an active seeker and receiver of justice. Briony Jones addresses contemporary criticism of transitional justice theory and practice in order to improve our understanding of the agency of people at times of transition.




Transitional Justice and Socio-Economic Rights in Zimbabwe


Book Description

This book addresses the issue of corruption as a socio-economic rights concern at a national level. Zimbabwe’s widespread corruption inhibited its development in all aspects. It weakened institutions, especially those called upon to arbitrate political and economic contests, leading to potential human rights violations. However, Zimbabwe saw a change of government in November 2017. Due to this, there seemed to be an opening to work towards reform in relation to the anti-corruption architecture. Specifically, the new era provides an opportunity to review how accountability mechanisms (including but not limited to amnesties, truth commissions, institutional reforms and prosecutions) can address corruption as a socio-economic rights violation. As the new government still tries to address competing priorities, many moving parts and various matrixes, this volume in the International Criminal Justice Series provides a timely frame for revisiting the debate and developing the strategic thinking regarding transitional justice options in Zimbabwe. It will be of great interest to practitioners, policy makers, scholars and students in the fields of anti-corruption, socio-economic and human rights, and transitional justice. Prosper Maguchu is Visiting Assistant Professor at the Centre for the Politics of Transnational Law of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.