Justice Framed
A Genealogy of Transitional Justice

A new perspective on the history of transitional justice and why the discourse prioritises particular responses to human rights violations.

Marcos Zunino (Author)

9781108475259, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 March 2019

318 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.6 kg

'Why is transitional justice what we think it is? In powerfully explaining how transitional justice came to be how we know it today, Marcos Zunino also reveals what it could have been and could become. With this book, transitional justice has a new classic.' Sarah Nouwen, Senior Lecturer in Law and Co-Deputy Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge

Why are certain responses to past human rights violations considered instances of transitional justice while others are disregarded? This study interrogates the history of the discourse and practice of the field to answer that question. Zunino argues that a number of characteristics inherited as transitional justice emerged as a discourse in the 1980s and 1990s have shaped which practices of the present and the past are now regarded as valid responses to past human rights violations. He traces these influential characteristics from Argentina's transition to democracy in 1983, the end of communism in Eastern Europe, the development of international criminal justice, and the South African truth commission of 1995. Through an analysis of the post-World War II period, the decolonisation process and the Cold War, Zunino identifies a series of episodes and mechanisms omitted from the history of transitional justice because they did not conform to its accepted characteristics.

1. Introduction
Part I. History: 2. The discourse of transitional justice: objects, concepts, actors and characteristics
3. The birth of transitional justice: emergence
Part II. Prehistory: 4. The myth of Nuremberg: origin
5. The Cold War impasse: descent
6. Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: International organisations & institutions [LBBU], International humanitarian law [LBBS], Legal history [LAZ], Armed conflict [JPWS], International relations [JPS]