Reframing Transitional Justice: Introduction to the Symposium

[Mark A. Drumbl is Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law and Director of the Transnational Law Institute, Washington and Lee University.

Kirsten J. Fisher is an Associate Professor with the Department of Political Studies, University of Saskatchewan.]

We are delighted that Opinio Juris is hosting a symposium on our edited collection Reframing Transitional Justice: Innovations, Boundaries, and Refractions (Routledge, 2026). We assembled this collection because we think the time is right, amid the tumble of the current tumult, to rethink where transitional justice and post-conflict reconstruction are going. We are decidedly not alone in this. After all, sixteen scholars – who joined us as authors on this path from eight countries on four continents – feel similarly.  Case studies considered in our book include Italy, Liberia, the Lusosphere, Colombia, USA, Libya, Bosnia, Hungary, Syria, and India, among others, along with the metaverse and the world of artificial intelligence.  And, now, we are thrilled that five esteemed commentators – Ligeia Quackelbeen, Frédéric Mégret, Julia Emtseva, Saheli Chakraborty, and María Estrada-Fuentes – are themselves newly joining this engaged and expanding conversational community as it jumps for a jaunt to Opinio Juris.

We hope for transitional justice to break free from much of the bureaucratized ordering (and the resultant othering), and constant addictive push for expansion, in which it currently seems to marinate.  This is one reason we chose the cover image that we did. This image comes from a wall mural that dates to The Troubles in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Breaking free, to be sure, leads to core questions of how to define and understand transitional justice.  Should transitional be limited to human suffering and human rights? Should it be restricted to responding to spectacular harms or expanded to address systemic and entrenched harms? What work does the word ‘justice’ do in the term transitional justice? Can remedies be innovated? Obversely, are there times when transitional justice should quietly sit instead of preachingly stand, in other words, not intervene at all? This latter question is pivotal. 

The rhythm of this book is a dance—a triple tango of sorts—among needs, wants, and abilities. On the one hand, contributors reveal the breadth of justice needs and the multifaceted nature of what could constitute a transition. There is much more work to do and transitional justice eagerly wants to expand and do it. On the other hand, contributors demonstrate that transitional justice may lack the ability to do more or the capacity to adequately do what it currently aims (and pledges) to do. The danger of over-promising and under-delivering thereby arises.  

Reframing Transitional Justice: Innovations, Boundaries, and Refractions aims to challenge the simplicity, predestination, and self-evident nature of contemporary narratives of transitional justice. It does so on three crucial fronts, each of which is presaged in the title of the book and each of which takes the form of a section of the book. The book ends with an epilogue authored by Luke Moffett.  

The first front is that of innovations. Here, this book questions the ability of transitional justice to deliver tangible successes in an era of rapid and overwhelming technological change and contestation over what constitutes human memory, communicative dialogue, and reliable evidence. This section is entitled ‘Innovations: Artificial Intelligence, Metaverse, and Human Memory.’ It examines the use of new technologies and other creative methods to gather evidence, offer reparative justice or undermine it, communicate the work of transitional justice practices, and produce memory. Transitional justice has enthusiastically pursued the adoption of artificial intelligence, social media platforms, and other mechanisms of crafting memory.  While the benefits of such moves have been lauded, this section also recommends caution and reflectiveness.  Contributions in this part are: Colleen Murphy. ‘Transitional Justice, Memorialization, and Artificial Intelligence’; Juan Espíndola, ‘Algorithms, Reparations, Repetitions: How Digital Platforms Erode the Aims of Transitional Justice’; Christopher Lamont,  ‘Algorithmic Justice: Digital Investigations and Transitional Justice’; Laura Gianna Guntrum, Maike Salzmann, and Christian Reuter, ‘Bridging Justice and Technology: Exploring the Integration of Information and Communication Technologies in Colombia’s Transitional Justice Process’; Daniel Gómez-Uribe, ‘Memory Workshops in Colombia: Co-creative and Inclusive Community Memory Building’.

The second front involves boundaries. This book confronts the professed superpower of transitional justice to do more and more in an endless concatenation of addictive additives. While there is cause for optimism, this book also suggests that transitional justice, as a product of neo-liberal capitalism, remains awkward in how it copes with the existential pressures of environmental, health, and cultural crises. This second section, entitled ‘Boundaries: The Practice and Challenges of Expanding or Shrinking the Cartography of Transitional Justice,’ grapples with the ways in which the cartography of transitional justice might expand or shrink. Focal points here involve environmental destruction, cultural property, and identification of core crimes. This section features: Rachel Killean, ‘Animals, War, and Multispecies Transitional Justice’; Lucas Lixinski, ‘Transitional Justice, Temporalities, and the Restitution of Cultural Objects’; Mark A. Drumbl  ‘Nonchalance and the Fascist Gaze’; and Timothy William Waters, ‘Escaping Genocide’s Gravity’.

On its third front, refractions, this book identifies how transitional justice addresses racism, misogyny, and democratic backsliding. The prism of transitional justice interventions remains inadequate in how it refracts these scourges.  This third section — ‘Refractions: Gender, Race, Authoritarianism’—reconsiders how transitional justice interfaces with the iniquities of patriarchy, white supremacy, and movements towards (rather than from) authoritarianism. This section examines tensions between state and society. Along the way attention is paid to the possibilities, penuries, and pernicious pantomimes of transitional justice vocabularies and best practices—along with how these can be manipulated.  Contributions here are: Tiffany Atkins, ‘Abolishing the Family Policing System as Transitional and Racial Justice’; Loyce Mrewa, ‘Liberian Peace Huts as Archetypes of Neotraditional Practices Advancing Gender Justice in Transitional Societies’; Kirsten Campbell, ‘Justice in Transition? The Challenge of Feminist Politics for Transitional Justice’; and C. William Vardy, ‘Beyond Democracy: Alternative Transitions in an Age of Democratic Backsliding’.

We all – editors and contributors — hope to chart a future path that remains attuned to the interests of actual victims, to the well-being of the Global South, and to the blossoming of society rather than the entrenchment of the state and ossified international institutions. This book aspires to reset, to reboot, and—ultimately—to reframe. It hopes for transitional justice to break free from the chains that tether it to its current form, while freeing victim communities from the chains that restrict their self-empowerment. These streaks, too, redound in the cover image.

In addition to the Belfast mural, however, a second image also profoundly moved us. This is a far more jittery image than the book cover. It is less simplistic. It is more vexing. This is a painting by Salvador Dalí, from 1939, which he eventually called ‘Untitled (Dream of Venus)’.  

This image speaks to us about the perched nature of transitional justice while overlooking a parched plane. We hope to flatten the distance between the level of people and the level of justice while also creating a more welcoming context to more fully populate the plane of transition so that it remains less sparse. Instead of the one arch—suggesting one way of doing things and one entry point—transitional justice could be reconceived in a more diverse, crisscrossing, and crosscutting fashion. For us, the perched figure exudes anxiousness. It is just so insecure, tattered and fraying, self-sabotaging … and …  self-centered but (as is often the case with such characters) just so un-self-aware. We hope instead to think about a calmer and more empathetic transitional justice that, while sensitive, also can guide pacifically rather than prattle nervously. And the beans on the ground—seeds, perhaps dropped by the anxious distracted figure, seeds that fell from a pocket?—well, they just lie in the shade on the empty unyielding surface. A strong wind would blow them away and scatter them into nothingness. The seeds do not slip in; nothing will grow from them. We are hopeful for a transitional justice that is more fecund, more fertile, and also more rooted.

Some of the five commentators will comment on the book, as a whole, while others focus on one of the individual sections. All develop their own threads and themes. In this regard, they (as one commentator beautifully puts it) each walk with the volume rather than write about the volume. Although authored independently, without pre-fab communion, the five commentaries each coincidentally (and organically) fit and flow one into the other with surprising points in common. Following the publication of the five commentaries, we will wrap up with a responsive conclusion that we hope will open new doors and new windows while mapping out commonalities among the contributors and embracing differences.

Photo attribution: Aida B on Unsplash