Transitional Justice and Peace Building

(4 Credits)

How do societies emerging from authoritarian rule and intra-state armed conflict deal with past mass human rights violations? In their attempts to address past gross human rights violations, what types of justice mechanisms do such societies employ? Ruti Teitel first coined the term transitional justice in her book Transitional Justice (2000). Since then the term has circulated widely in scholarly and policy communities to describe a set of mechanisms and approaches to address past violence. This course analyzes the problems facing societies with past human rights violations, the numerous options they have at their disposal to engage these abuses and the political, economic, legal and ethical ramifications of each choice. The course is organized into two sections. The first section introduces theoretical approaches to study of transitional justice. The second section analyzes the most frequently used mechanisms, focusing on their potency in advancing democratization and reconciliation. Case studies include: the prosecutions of Nuremberg and Tokyo; the international tribunals of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; the hybrid tribunals of Timor Leste, Cambodia, and Sierra Leone.