What are Transitions for? Atrocity, International Criminal Justice, and the Political

Abstract

Transitional justice is the complex set of practices and processes that is supposed to help societies transition from atrocity into a post-atrocity, better future. It has also been more thinly defined as a transition from one political regime to the next. Transitional justice practices and processes have embraced, in different degrees, the form of law. Law in this context has been both generative and generated in fora: for constitutional reform; for demanding and receiving accounts from perpetrators of atrocities; for giving victims an opportunity to name and recount their personal tragedies and receive reparation; for retributive, consequentialist, and symbolic punishment; for the establishment of a truthful record of the past; and for (re)conciliation.