Understanding transitional justice: Crime,

punishment and process (Seminar)

AY 2016-2017, Term 2
Seminar coordinator: Eric Gordy, e.gordy@ucl.ac.uk
Seminar: Fridays 2-4PM, room probably tba
Office hours: Tuesdays 2-4, SSEES room 323

Although crimes committed in the course of violent conflict have traditionally remained
uninvestigated and unaddressed, the International Military Tribunals established at the end of the
Second World War have led to greater demands for domestic and international responses.
Following on that conflict, the adoption of the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights marked turning points in the adoption of standards and the generation of means
for their enforcement. The first international criminal tribunal was established in 1993 to
prosecute violations committed in the wars of Yugoslav succession, followed by the
establishment of a number of other ad hoc tribunals and the International Criminal Court in 2002.
This seminar seeks to explore issues of prosecution and punishment of crime, of the construction
of public memory and forgetting, and alternative strategies to criminal prosecution. We will both
explore and interrogate the emerging category of transitional justice, and consider research on
the consequences (or lack of them) of efforts to generate a social confrontation with the past.
Assessment
1 assessed essay of 3000 words, due on Monday, 1 May 2017
Formative assessment: case studies + oral presentations to the seminar
Background reading

Ratner, Steven, Jason Abrams, and James Bischoff. Accountability for human rights
atrocities in international law: Beyond the Nuremberg legacy (3rd ed., Oxford UP, 2009)

Scheper-Hughes, Nancy and Philippe Bourgois (eds.), Violence in war and peace: An
anthology (Blackwell, 2003)

Week 1: Introduction and overview

There is no required reading for Week 1. A general outline and theoretical introduction of
the course will be provided.

Week 2: A brief history of post-conflict and postregime justice

Bass, Gary J, "Introduction," Chapter 1 of Stay the hand of justice: The politics of war
crimes tribunals (Princeton UP: second edition, 2002), pp. 3-36.

Ishay, Micheline. "Globalization and its impact on human rights," Chapter 5 of The history
of human rights: From ancient times to the globalization era (U of California Press, 2008),
pp. 245-314.

Osiel, Mark J. Ever Again: Legal Remembrance of Administrative Massacre. University

of Pennsylvania Law Review, vol. 144, no. 2, 1995, pp. 463704.

Teitel, Ruti. "The rule of law in transition," Chapter 1 of Transitional justice (Oxford UP,
2000), pp. 11-26.

Week 3: Understanding causes of large-scale

violence

Chirot, Daniel and MacAuley, Clark. "The psychological foundations of genocidal killing,"
Chapter 2 of Why not kill them all? The logic and prevention of mass political
murder (Princeton UP, 2006), pp. 51-94.

Staub, Erwin. "Steps along a continuum of destruction," Chapter 6 of The roots of evil:
The origins of genocide and other group violence (Cambridge UP, 1992), pp. 79-90.

Valentino, Benjamin. "The strategic logic of mass killing," Chapter 3 of Final solutions:
Mass killings and genocide in the 20th century (Cornell UP, 2005), pp. 66-90.

Week 4: Construction of memory or politics of

forgetting?

Cohen, Stanley. "Digging up graves, opening up wounds," Chapter 9 of States of denial:

Knowing about atrocities and suffering (Polity Press, 2001), pp. 222-248.

Hayner, Priscilla. "What is the truth?" and "Leaving the past alone," Chapters 6 and 12
of Unspeakable truths: Transitional justice and the challenge of truth
commissions (Routledge, 2010), pp. 72-85 and 183-205.

Week 5: Truth or justice?

Krog, Antje. Country of my skull: Guilt, sorrow and the limits of forgiveness in the new
South Africa (Broadway Books, 2000), Chapters 10 and 11, pp. 142-161.

Elizabeth Kiss, "Moral ambition within and beyond political constraints," in Rotberg,
Robert and Dennis Thompson, Truth vs. justice: The morality of truth
commissions (Princeton UP, 2000), pp. 68-98.

Kent Greenawalt, "Amnesty's justice," in Rotberg, Robert and Dennis Thompson, Truth
vs. justice: The morality of truth commissions (Princeton UP, 2000), pp. 189-210.

Week 6: Collective memory and collective guilt

Barkan, Elazar. "Toward a theory of restitution," Chapter 13 of The guilt of nations:

Restitution and negotiating historical injustices (Norton, 2000), pp. 308-349.

Obradovi-Wochnik, Jelena. "The Silent Dilemma of Transitional Justice: Silencing and

Coming to Terms with the Past in Serbia"
International Journal of Transitional Justice 2013, pp. 1-20.

Brown, Rupert and Sabina ehaji. "Dealing with the past and facing the future:
Mediators of the effects of collective guilt and shame in Bosnia and
Herzegovina," European Journal of Social Psychology 38 (2008), pp. 669-684.

Week 7: Transitional justice in the context of

international politics

Kurze, Arnaud, Christopher Lamont and Simon Robins. "Contested spaces of transitional
justice: legal empowerment in global post-conflict contexts revisited," International
Journal of Human Rights, 19:3 (2015), pp. 260-276,

Peskin, Victor. "Beyond Victors Justice? The Challenge of Prosecuting the Winners at
the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda." Journal of
Human Rights, 4 (2005), pp. 213231.

Suboti, Jelena. "The Transformation of International Transitional Justice

Advocacy." International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 6 (2012), pp. 106125

Week 8: Gender in international justice

Helms, Elissa. "The gender of coffee: Women and reconciliation initiatives in post-war
Bosnia and Herzegovina." Focaal 57 (2010), pp. 17-32.

Campbell, Kirsten. "The Gender of Transitional Justice: Law, Sexual Violence and the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia." International Journal of
Transitional Justice, Vol. 1 (2007), pp. 411432.

Mertus, Julie. "Shouting from the Bottom of the Well: The Impact of International Trials for
Wartime Rape on Women's Agency." International Feminist Journal of Politics 6:1 (2004),
pp. 110-128.

Week 9: Social contexts of international justice

Lamont, Christopher and Hannah Pannwitz. "Transitional Justice as Elite Justice?

Compromise Justice and Transition in Tunisia." Global Policy 7:2 (2016), pp. 278-281.

David, Lea. "Fragmentation as a Silencing Strategy: Serbian War Veterans against the
State of Serbia." Contemporary Southeast Europe 2:1 (2015), pp. 55-73.

Gordy, Eric. "Denial, avoidance, shifts of context: From denial to responsibility in eleven
steps." Chapter 6 of Guilt, responsibility and denial: The past at stake in post-Miloevi
Serbia (Pennsylvania, 2013), pp. 87-123.

Week 10: Current issues; summary and review

There is no required reading for Week 10.