Truth v. Justice by Robert I. Rotberg, Dennis Thompson

By Robert I. Rotberg, Dennis Thompson

The reality fee is an more and more universal fixture of newly democratic states with repressive or strife-ridden pasts. From South Africa to Haiti, fact commissions are at paintings with various levels of help and good fortune. To many, they're the best--or only--way to accomplish an entire accounting of crimes dedicated opposed to fellow electorate and to avoid destiny clash. Others query even if a restorative justice that units the to blame unfastened, that cleanses society via phrases on my own, can deter destiny abuses and make allowance sufferers and their households to heal. right here, top philosophers, attorneys, social scientists, and activists representing a number of views examine the method of fact commissioning usually and in post-apartheid South Africa. They ask even if the reality fee, as a style of looking justice after clash, is reasonable, ethical, and potent in bringing approximately reconciliation.The authors weigh the virtues and failings of fact commissions, specifically the South African fact and Reconciliation fee, of their try and offer restorative instead of retributive justice. They learn, between different concerns, using reparations as social coverage and the granting of amnesty in alternate for testimony. lots of the individuals compliment South Africa's determination to alternate due strategy for the categories of fact that let closure. yet they're skeptical that such revelations produce reconciliation, rather in societies that stay divided after a compromise peace with out unmarried victor, as in El Salvador. finally, notwithstanding, they locate the reality fee to be a precious if imperfect device for societies trying to say "never back" with self assurance. At a time while fact commissions were proposed for Bosnia, Kosovo, Cyprus, East Timor, Cambodia, Nigeria, Palestine, and somewhere else, the authors' end that restorative justice presents optimistic earnings couldn't be extra important.In addition to the editors, the participants are Amy Gutmann, Rajeev Bhargava, Elizabeth Kiss, David A. Crocker, André du Toit, Alex Boraine, Dumisa Ntsebeza, Lisa Kois, Ronald C. Slye, Kent Greenawalt, Sanford Levinson, Martha Minow, Charles S. Maier, Charles Villa-Vicencio, and Wilhelm Verwoerd.

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But these measures are not enough to constitute criminal justice as it is commonly understood, and the defenders of this view do not demonstrate that the common conception of justice should simply be abandoned, rather than outweighed or overridden by more urgent moral considerations. Justice is not achieved when a murderer or rapist publicly acknowledges his crimes but is not brought to trial and suffers no further punishment. ) Even if the victims received financial compensation, the demands of justice (on virtually any theory) would not be satisfied.

But it is not realistic to dismiss as impossible the goal of bringing some perpetrators to justice, at least in societies like South Africa, where extensive records were kept, and where a relatively reliable police force and criminal justice system are now in place. Shortly after Malan was acquitted, Eugene de Kock, the former head of Vlakplaas, a notorious police hit squad, was convicted on eighty-nine charges, including six counts of murder, and sentenced to two life terms, the maximum allowable under South African law.

This “truth for amnesty” provision, added in the so-called “postamble” to the interim constitution, is thought by many people, including many victims of apartheid, to be the most morally problematic practice of the TRC. Although only a relatively small proportion of applicants were granted amnesty, some were among the most egregious perpetrators. When amnesty is granted, the guilty not only go unpunished, but even escape trial. When amnesty is not granted, prosecution of the applicants is still possible but has proved difficult.

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