How “Transitions” Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice

Show full item record

Title: How “Transitions” Reshaped Human Rights: A Conceptual History of Transitional Justice
País: United States
Idioma: English
Fuente: Fuente:  Human Rights QuarterlyFuente:  Human Rights Quarterly
Reseña: This article clarifies the origins of the field of transitional justice and its preliminary conceptual boundaries. I argue that the field began to emerge in the late 1980s, as a consequence of new practical conditions that human rights activists faced in countries such as Argentina, where authoritarian regimes had been replaced by more democratic ones. The turn away from “naming and shaming” and toward accountability for past abuse among human rights activists was taken up at the international level, where the focus on political change as “transition to democracy” helped to legiti- mate those claims to justice that prioritized legal-institutional reforms and responses—such as punishing leaders, vetting abusive security forces, and replacing state secrecy with truth and transparency—over other claims to justice that were oriented toward social justice and redistribution. I end by discussing the many ways in which these initial conceptual boundaries have since been tested and expanded.


Files in this item

Thumbnail Files: Paige_arthur.pdf
Size: 298.7Kb
Format: PDF

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show full item record