Historical Justice

In recent decades, many post-conflict and post-authoritarian societies have developed various non-judicial and quasi-judicial mechanisms beyond trials to deal with the consequences of mass atrocities. These mechanisms include truth commissions, local and national reconciliation processes, memory initiatives, apologies, conditional amnesties and reparations, among others. They not only represent distinct tools for addressing past injustices but also embody distinct theories of justice, including restorative, reparative, customary and historical justice. The article argues that the proliferation and coexistence of multiple theories of justice have made the field of transitional justice inherently pluralistic, moving it beyond a singular liberal-legalist tradition. The primary challenge is to examine how these theories of justice coexist, intersect and interact. Building on critical transitional justice literature, empirical findings, and informed by legal pluralism, this article does not propose a new overarching theory of justice. Rather, it aims to conceptualise a pluralistic theory of justice rooted in praxis and communities' perceptions of justice. This framework seeks to reorient the field's theoretical foundation and more accurately capture the multifaceted nature of justice after atrocities by incorporating diverse knowledge systems and lived experiences.

Non-collateralised, good-intentioned, African Promoters of Infrastructural Investment Programs are challenged by a gamut of obstacles, not least, the Cost of Feasibilities Studies, Cost of Land Acquisition and requisite Technical Competencies. Whilst some Ethical Infrastructural Investment Firms i.e. Beyond

The Republic of Estonia inherited administrative expulsion law from the Russian Empire. During 1920-1934 (no expulsion cases were reviewed after 1934), the Supreme Court of Estonia reviewed 16 complaints involving foreigners and 36 complaints involving citizens. Foreigners were expelled for alleged sedition, disturbing the peace, hiding fugitives, smuggling or bootlegging, or constituting a burden to the economy recovering from the war. The Supreme Court upheld only one complaint because the authorities failed to provide reasons for the continuing banishment. Otherwise, the court accepted the unlimited discretion of the Interior Minister to expel foreigners. The 1920 Constitution guaranteed citizens the freedom of movement and residence which could be curbed by administrative authorities for the protection of public health. Therefore, administrative expulsion of citizens was only possible as an emergency measure. Nationwide state of emergency lasted in Estonia from 1918 to 1922, after the attempt of the Communist coup from 1924 to 1926, briefly in 1933, and from 1934 until the occupation of Estonia in 1940. In between, there was state of emergency in certain parts of the country: in the capital city of Tallinn, its neighbouring municipalities, railways, and municipalities along the Estonian-Russian border. Citizens were banished from the areas under a state of emergency for alleged sedition, speculation, liquor smuggling, bootlegging, and brothel-keeping. The Supreme Court upheld complaints when the expulsion decision had no legal ground (in four cases) or was unreasoned or the authorities failed to prove the factual basis for the allegations (in another four cases). The court left the administrative authorities a wide margin of appreciation and accepted expulsion beyond clearly political reasons.

This paper analyses how tropes of racism against people of African descent manifest in public texts (permanent education sites) of different genres and forms. The selected permanent education sites include the mediatisation of the public and private lives of the British royal family’s Prince Harry and Meghan’s break away from royal duties, the FIFA World Cup and the English Premier League, the Chinese Museum in Hubei, and other public incidences that provoked racial controversies. These activities, controversies and exhibitions are vehicles through which racism is reproduced as part of the historical global capitalist system. This is the ubiquitous public pedagogy of permanent education. The porous but multifarious dominant sitesdiffuse diverse forms of pedagogical address to put into play a limited range of identities, ideologies, and subject positions that both reinforce neoliberal social relations and undermine the capacity for democratic politics. Critical scholarship has a norm...

In the Call for Papers for this 2020 Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization (CBAAC) conference on-Racism, Racial Inequality and the Struggles of the global African for survival in the 21st Century,‖ the following convenient truths are delineated as the historical signposts for racism against global Africans: (a) the enslavement and displacement of Africans, (b) the colonization of Africans, and (c) the integration of Africans into a bipolar global system. While not minimizing the magnitudes and ramifications of these aspects for the persistent racism against the global African, I also argue in this paper that the analysis of this phenomenon is incomplete without including the following two inconvenient truths: (1) the failure to heed the call of early Pan-Africanists to establish a Union of African States and (2) the existence of intra-racial discrimination and Black-on-Black violence. Thus, employing the Ancient Kemetian approach of ai-[t] m' såati (meaning the-analysis of discrimination and hypocrisy‖), I demonstrate that only by analyzing both the preceding convenient and inconvenient truths can Global Africans unearth the necessary Africancentered answers to confront the ills of the racism that has and continues to be afflicted upon them. Consequently, instead of the slogan-Black Lives Matter,‖ which has become vacuous, I suggest the Ancient Kemetian notion of neb ānkh iw neter khe-t (meaning-every life is sacred‖), which found its way into the tenets of the Abrahamic faiths-i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-as the precept to guide global Africans in their fight against racism.

This paper analyses how tropes of racism against people of African descent manifest in public texts (permanent education sites) of different genres and forms. The selected permanent education sites include the mediatisation of the public and private lives of the British royal family’s Prince Harry and Meghan’s break away from royal duties, the FIFA World Cup and the English Premier League, the Chinese Museum in Hubei, and other public incidences that provoked racial controversies. These activities, controversies and exhibitions are vehicles through which racism is reproduced as part of the historical global capitalist system. This is the ubiquitous public pedagogy of permanent education. The porous but multifarious dominant sitesdiffuse diverse forms of pedagogical address to put into play a limited range of identities, ideologies, and subject positions that both reinforce neoliberal social relations and undermine the capacity for democratic politics. Critical scholarship has a norm...

This paper analyses how tropes of racism against people of African descent manifest in public texts (permanent education sites) of different genres and forms. The selected permanent education sites include the mediatisation of the public and private lives of the British royal family’s Prince Harry and Meghan’s break away from royal duties, the FIFA World Cup and the English Premier League, the Chinese Museum in Hubei, and other public incidences that provoked racial controversies. These activities, controversies and exhibitions are vehicles through which racism is reproduced as part of the historical global capitalist system. This is the ubiquitous public pedagogy of permanent education. The porous but multifarious dominant sitesdiffuse diverse forms of pedagogical address to put into play a limited range of identities, ideologies, and subject positions that both reinforce neoliberal social relations and undermine the capacity for democratic politics. Critical scholarship has a norm...

The European Union (EU) is in the midst of what could be deemed the biggest threat to its current order since its inception: Member States backsliding on EU founding values. Indeed, the EU is showing no sign of having the rule of law backsliding crisis under control in states such as Hungary and Poland, a decade since the first signs of populist takeovers emerged. Since the foundational values of liberal constitutional democracy were first challenged in these two Central Eastern European (CEE) countries, similar issues in other Member States have also come to light, such as in the Czech Republic and Malta, amongst others. However, little information is available about the democratic stability of other States that also acceded to the EU in 2004. This paper is a stocktaking exercise which aims to address this gap in relation to the fidelity of Latvia to the founding EU value of the rule of law 18 years since it became an EU member. It will examine the state of judicial independence in Latvia during the past few years. Attacks on judicial independence are the main battleground on which the EU is fighting Hungary and Poland, and a value that is considered central to the EU's understanding of the rule of law. It is important to understand Latvia's current state of judicial independence in order to build a broader picture of the status of the rule of law in all Member States. This knowledge will help to fight the EU's rule of law crisis and the rise of populism. This is something that needs to be achieved sooner rather than later so that the EU can stand united against an ever more aggressive Russia to the East.

This article addresses a key contemporary problem confronting the Strasbourg Court. While it is well established that seeking the historical truth is an integral part of the right to freedom of expression, it cannot be the role of the Strasbourg Court to arbitrate underlying historical issues (Dzhugashvili v. Russia, 2014). Still less can it be for the Court to decide on individual or collective guilt for crimes of the past, rather than on violations of Convention rights. For example, the Court has found many violations of human rights in the more recent armed conflicts in Northern Ireland, South-East Turkey, Chechnya, or the Basque Country, but has never sought to pronounce on the legal or moral issues underlying these conflicts, or on their deep historical roots. However, the existence of the ussr for more than 70 years, and 12 years of Nazism in Germany, leading to wwii, dominated the 20th century in Europe. These have both been described as totalitarian regimes. The fall of the ...

This article addresses a key contemporary problem confronting the Strasbourg Court. While it is well established that seeking the historical truth is an integral part of the right to freedom of expression, it cannot be the role of the Strasbourg Court to arbitrate underlying historical issues (Dzhugashvili v. Russia, 2014). Still less can it be for the Court to decide on individual or collective guilt for crimes of the past, rather than on violations of Convention rights. For example, the Court has found many violations of human rights in the more recent armed conflicts in Northern Ireland, South-East Turkey, Chechnya, or the Basque Country, but has never sought to pronounce on the legal or moral issues underlying these conflicts, or on their deep historical roots. However, the existence of the ussr for more than 70 years, and 12 years of Nazism in Germany, leading to wwii, dominated the 20th century in Europe. These have both been described as totalitarian regimes. The fall of the ...

After years of political wrangling and public controversy, the Latvian parliament decided in fall 2018 to fully disclose the names of several thousand former KGB agents and informers. Ever since, the country has been plunged into a renewed confrontation with its recent past, all the more so as many well-known figures from Latvian cultural life appeared to have worked with the KGB. The article provides the political and legal background to the current debate and assesses the ongoing media engagement with the topic.

The Lithuanian Constitution (1992) is described in the report as a typical revolutionary constitution, adopted after the collapse of a totalitarian regime. The Constitutional Court (CC) is a strong player both in terms of the protection of fundamental rights and as an arbitrator in political disputes. The report observes that due to their bitter historical struggle for statehood, Lithuanians have generally treated membership in the EU as a fundamental geopolitical choice. From this perspective, the Constitution is unique, as it was – in a self-standing constitutional act – extensively opened to the EU, whilst another constitutional act prohibits joining any union based on the former USSR. The CC has held that the Constitution establishes a constitutional imperative of EU and NATO membership. By and large, no critical constitutional debates have arisen in relation to EU and transnational law. Some exceptions include an (unsuccessful) request to hold a referendum on the adoption of th...

We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of the United Nations and in the life of mankind, that is the approval by the General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recommended by the Third Committee. This declaration may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere." Eleanor Roosevelt

It is 73 Years since the Universal Declaration of Fundamental Human Rights [UDHR] was promulgated to be a kind of “international Magan Carta of all men everywhere”. Sadly, even the freedoms, liberties and rights of “all men” on the earth are an illusion, let alone those of all humans, not least women. Among those men and women for whom fundamental freedoms, liberties and rights remain as distant as the heavens are Majority Native African Men and Women, whose tranquil lives have never been restored ever since foreign imperialism stepped their feet on the shores of Continental Africa – the Romans and Greeks, followed by Europeans Colonisation, characterised by phases of human tragedies to this day. It is heartbreaking to note that the Declaration of the UDHR has done little to dismantle the supremacist ideologies, their structures and superstructures of domination and peripheralisation, which has become even more entrenched, barring mere window dressings, superficialism and symbolism. On the 73 Anniversary of UDHR, the CORPUS GREAT SOVEREIGN RIGHTS INSTITUTES | CORPUS GREAT INSTITUTES, Centres of Excellence, Chancellery Chambers & Foundation calls for the United Nations [International Community] to get serious about including Indigenous Africa into an international Magna Carta of all humans. The endless horrible, inhumane, dehumanising and tragic images that reflect the dismal lived experiences of Majority Indigenous Africans bear witness to the 500 Year European and American Siege Against Continental Africa. We call for the 5 Centuries’ Old AntiAfrican Siege to be lifted forthwith and with the fiercest urgency of time.

Im Kontext des übergeordneten Themenfeldes der Konsolidie- rungs- und Transitionsforschung rekapituliert der Beitrag die bisherige Forschung zur Aufarbeitung staatlich verantworteter Menschenrechtsverbrechen in Lateinamerika. Der Fülle ver- schiedener Ansätze und Perspektiven werden noch bestehende Forschungslücken und -desiderata gegenübergestellt. Davon ausgehend wird ein alternativer Forschungsansatz entwickelt, der den Begriff der Vergangenheitspolitik ins Zentrum der Analyse rückt. Es wird dargelegt, welche Vorteile eine

Kurz nach seinem Amtsantritt und fast genau fünfhundert Jahre nach der Eroberung und Zerstörung Tenochtitláns durch die Truppen unter Hernán Cortés verlangte im März 2019 der mexikanische Präsident Andrés Manuel López Obrador in einem Schreiben an den spanischen König Philip VI. eine Entschuldigung für die Verbrechen der spanischen Kolonisierung Mexikos. In Spanien löste diese Aufforderung weithin Verblüffung und nur in wenigen Stellungnahmen Verständnis aus. Zwar ist es möglich, eine Beziehung zwischen den historischen Ereignissen und der Gegenwart herzustellen, wie dies die dekoloniale Diskussion in Lateinamerika generell versucht, aber wie immer man dies unternimmt, bleibt diese Beziehung doch zu uneindeutig, um eine Entschuldigung des heutigen Spaniens gegenüber dem heutigen Mexiko zu einer plausiblen, ja gar moralischpolitisch geforderten Geste zu machen: zuviel Zeit ist vergangen; weder Täterverantwortung noch Opferleiden lassen sich unter den Nachfahren leicht ausmachen; der entstandene Schaden lässt sich nicht bemessen; und selbst wenn man rechtliche Kontinuität des heutigen Spaniens mit der Herrschaft Karls I. annehmen will, so ist doch Mexiko bereits seit zwei Jahrhunderten von Spanien unabhängig und regiert sich selbst.

John Barzman, « Autour de l’abolition aux Etats-Unis. ‘Unrequited labor’ : justice historique et compensation financière des esclaves émancipés (Etats-Unis, 1864-1870) », dans
Les abolitions. De la Normandie aux Amériques
Cahiers de l’histoire et des mémoires de la traite négrière, de l’esclavage et de leurs abolitions, n°2.
Le Havre : UMR IDEES 6266, 2010. 236 p.

After years of political wrangling and public controversy, the Latvian parliament decided in fall 2018 to fully disclose the names of several thousand former KGB agents and informers. Ever since, the country has been plunged into a renewed confrontation with its recent past, all the more so as many well-known figures from Latvian cultural life appeared to have worked with the KGB. The article provides the political and legal background to the current debate and assesses the ongoing media engagement with the topic.

Das allgemeine Forschungsthema  dieser Bachelorarbeit – die internationale politikwissenschaftliche Vergangenheitspolitik – stellt kein neues Phänomen dar.
Der Faktor Vergangenheit hat Ende der 1980er und Anfang der 1990er Jahre aufzuflammen begonnen, die jeweiligen wissenschaftlichen Diskurse der betroffenen Länder jedoch unterschiedlich stark beeinflusst. Im Falle Griechenlands gibt es nur sehr wenige wissenschaftliche Publikationen, welche sich mit den Schlagwörtern transitional justice und/oder Vergangenheitspolitik assoziieren lassen.                    Die Transitionsphase nach dem Ende der griechischen Militärdiktatur 1974 findet zwar im akademischen Diskurs der griechischen Forschungslandschaft ihren Platz, die Auseinandersetzung mit ihr erfolgt jedoch vorwiegend auf historisch deskriptive und weniger analytische Art und Weise.
Eine explizite Befassung mit Vergangenheitspolitik  ist im Gegensatz zu Argentinien, welches in den letzten Jahrzehnten nahezu einen Hype an Publikationen (Fachliteratur, sowie Belletristik), die eigene Vergangenheit betreffend erlebt hat, kaum anzutreffen.
Ebenso ist festzustellen, dass die Öffentlichkeit in Argentinien sensibilisierter für die Thematik der Vergangenheitspolitik ist, als die griechische Gesellschaft.

Im Rahmen dieser Bachelorarbeit soll ein Vergleich der Transitionsphasen in beiden Ländern im Hinblick auf die Anwendung und Beeinflussung von transitional justice auf die Vergangenheitspolitik von Griechenland und Argentinien gezogen werden.           

Der Fokus wird hierbei auf der durch die (inter-) nationale Politik mitbestimmten Aufarbeitung der jeweiligen Militärdiktatur, sowie der gesellschaftlichen Perzeption liegen.

This study compares the politics of post-Soviet retrospective criminal justice processes in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania after 1991. Taking an institutionalist approach, it pays particular attention to the interactions between judicial and non-judicial institutions in the search for truth and justice, and analyzes how the nature of this interaction determines processes of historical narrative framing and remembering in the public domain. The study, thus, not only provides a comparative discussion of legal frameworks and legal practices in all three states, but also links this with a critical examination of the investigatory infrastructure put up by state legislators to enhance prosecutorial capacity and efficiency. Its main contention is that such an analysis of the institutional context of investigations and trials is essential in order to better understand how judicial procedures and resulting truths translate into public historical discourses and collective memory.

Seit den 1980er-Jahren haben sich Wahrheitskommissionen zu einem wichtigen Instrument entwickelt, um nach politischen Umbrüchen schwere Menschenrechtsverletzungen aufzuarbeiten. Doch wie konnte sich diese Organisationsform, mit politisch motivierten Verbrechen umzugehen, über kulturelle und politische Unterschiede hinweg weltweit verbreiten? Anne K. Krüger schildert die vier Phasen der Entstehung und Verbreitung dieses Standardinstruments der Transitional Justice. Dabei beantwortet sie die Frage, wie sich das kulturelle Modell einer »Versöhnung durch Wahrheit« zum Bestandteil einer gemeinsamen Weltkultur entwickelte.

Suhestiyon:
Mahal na Pangulong Digong, magalang at kongkreto ko pong ipinapanukala, na sapagkat ang usapin at problema pong ito ay usapin at problema ng Bayan --- Bakit hindi po ninyo ibalik o ibato sa Buong  Bayan po mismo ang bagay na ito?
Ang Bayan po ang naglagay sa inyo kung nasaan man kayo ngayon! Katulong po ninyo kami sa pagguhit at pagsasakatuparan ng inyong Tadhana’t Layunin, kung kaya po naman, muli, bakit hindi po ang Buong Bayan mismo ang magpasya hinggil sa bagay na ito?
Our People, Mr President have decided on you, now, I certainly believe Sir that the right thing to do under the prevailing divisive circumstances is to bring back to the People this whole matter! Hence, Sir: LET THE PEOPLE, THEMSELVES, AS A WHOLE DECIDE ON THIS!
LET US SEEK THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE, AS A WHOLE, SIR!
Magalang ko pong iminumungkahi, kahit po magastos at matrabaho, para po lamang sa ikatatapos at pagsasara ng buong usaping ito --- ang pagpapatawag po o pagdaraos ng isa pong PAMBANSANG REFERENDUM --- na dapat pong isagawa’t idaos sa buong bansa?!
Isa po lamang ang tanong sa balota/Taong-Bayan at ito po ay:
Payag ka bang malibing si G Marcos sa LNB?
Ngayon po, Mahal na Pangulo, ano man po ang maging resulta’t hatol ng Bayan ay dapat pong igalang ng lahat!
Ayon nga po sa ating Saligang Batas:
“Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.”
Kung gayon po, Mahal na Pangulo, sa oras po na umabot na po tayo sa Pasiya ng Bayan --- tungkulin na po ng lahat na igalang ito at tumalima sa Dikta ng Bayan!
Marami pong salamat, Mahal na Pangulo, sa inyong panahon! Hanga ko po ang inyong ibayong lakas at masiglang kalusugan upang magampanan po ninyo ng buong ibayo’t tatag ang inyong tungkulin bilang Pinuno’t Ama nang ating bansa!
Padayon po at Mabuhay po kayo!
#MAYPAGASA!!!

Автор полагает, что одним из важных факторов легитимации этнических элит является использование доводов и аргументов исторической справедливости. На постсоветском пространстве для этой цели используются манипулятивные трактовки исторических событий, результаты опросов, политические события и т.п.

Print) Diese Arbeit ist im Sonderforschungsbereich 700 Governance in Räumen begrenzter Staatlichkeit -Neue Formen des Regierens entstanden und wurde auf seine Veranlassung unter Verwendung der ihm von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft zur Verfügung gestellten Mittel gedruckt.

Bislang hat sich die Demokratieforschung kaum damit auseinandergesetzt, in welcher Weise sich der Umgang mit unter dem Vorgängerregime begangenen Menschenrechtsverletzungen auf die Konsolidierungschancen einer jungen Demokratie auswirkt. Der Beitrag vertritt die These, dass die Suche nach Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit lediglich einzelne Teildimensionen von Demokratie beeinflusst, und greift die Dimension der Rechtsstaatlichkeit heraus. Neben der theoretischen Diskussion möglicher Effekte von Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung auf die Herausbildung rechtsstaatlicher Standards und Institutionen werden Probleme der Konzeptspezifikation und Messung von abhängiger und unabhängiger Variable aufgezeigt. Empirische Analysen liefern deutliche Hinweise auf einen positiven Zusammenhang zwischen Vergangenheitsbearbeitung und Rechtsstaatlichkeit. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden die Herausforderungen weiterführender Forschung zur Wirkung von Transitional Justice beleuchtet. Until now, democracy research has hardly looked into how the manner in which the previous regime’s human rights violations are dealt with affects the ability of young democracies to consolidate. The article supports the assumption that the search for truth and justice only influences certain democratic partial regimes and focuses on the Rule of Law dimension. While discussing possible effects of reconciliation work on the evolution of standards and institutions of the Rule of Law in theory, the article also points out the challenges of specifying and measuring the concepts pertaining to the dependent and independent variables. Empirical analyses provide clear indications of a positive relationship between reconciliation work and the Rule of Law. The challenges of further research on the effect of transitional justice are examined in this light.

Die Debatte über den historischen Kontext der politischen Transitionen in Brasilien und Deutschland ermöglicht uns, einige Schlüsselfragen über die Beziehung zwischen Geschichte und Transitionaler Gerechtigkeit gegenüberzustellen. So versucht dieser kurze Aufsatz fünf Grenzfragen aufzuwerfen, die die Begegnung und den Austausch des Historikers mit dem Juristen im konkreten Verfahren der Suche nach Gerechtigkeitsformen ermöglichen. Der Aufsatz folgt der Auffassung von De Greiff, dass die Transitionale Gerechtigkeit keine „moderate“ Gerechtigkeitsform sei, sondern ein Zusammenhang von geeigneten Mechanismen, um eine bestimmte Hinterlassenschaft zu bewältigen. Weil sich die jeweils aktuell praktizierte judiziale Gerechtigkeit zu dieser Bewältigung unvorbereitet zeige, sei es Aufgabe des Staates, eine breitere Gesamtheit von öffentlichen Politiken zu artikulieren.2 Aus unserer Sicht verstärkt diese Vorstellung die Perspektive, die wir hier erforschen möchten, nämlich: die Perspektive des Austausches von Kenntnissen für den Aufbau von Gerechtigkeitsformen.