1. The development of transitional justice Joanna R. Quinn INTRODUCTION This volume is focused on transitional justice, an ‘epistemic community’ that is quickly becoming a ‘field’ in its own right. 1 Yet what it is and what it seeks to do must be underpinned by an understanding of its origins and its development across time and space. Considering the depth and breadth of scholarship that now coalesces around this theme, it is remarkable that the term ‘transitional justice’ was not commonly used until the early- to mid-1990s. Until that time, scholars referred to their work in this area as ‘justice after atrocity’ or ‘retroactive justice’. Often they worked in isolation, sometimes coming across the work of another scholar doing something similar, and then often only by happenstance. This came about, in part, because scholars themselves came out of different academic traditions, including political science and law. They came to this work through one of two main understandings: (a) the cessation of the Cold War created an opening for the protection of human rights, and made possible an accounting for abuses that had previously been committed; or (b) because the end of the Cold War meant that countries were suddenly able to transition to democracy, and were therefore able to begin to put in place instruments and policies that would consolidate that democracy. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first part traces the development of transitional justice, beginning in the modern era with the post-Second World War tribunals convened at Nuremberg and Tokyo, and continuing to the present. The chapter focuses on four of the most widely used instruments of transitional justice (criminal prosecutions, reparations, amnesty and truth-telling), but many countries opted to use other instruments and approaches that deserve mention as well. Much has been written, for example, about policies of ‘official forgetting’ 2 and ‘leaving the past alone’, 3 which have not been covered here. Likewise, although policies of lustration were frequently used throughout Eastern Europe, they are not addressed here. 4 1 Elin Skaar and Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, ‘The Drivers of Transitional Justice: An Analytical Framework for Assessing the Role of Actors’ (2013) 31(2) Nordic Journal of Human Rights 127; Christine Bell, ‘Transitional Justice, Interdisciplinarity and the State of the “Field” or “Non-Field”’ (2009) 3(1) International Journal of Transitional Justice 5. 2 For example, Spain’s Pacto del Olvido: Paloma Aguilar, Memory and Amnesia: The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy (Mark Gordon Oakley tr, Berghahn Books 2002). 3 Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths (Routledge 2001) 183–205; Rosalind Shaw, Rethinking Truth and Reconciliation Commissions: Lessons from Sierra Leone (United States Institute of Peace 2005). 4 See Stan Chapter 25, this volume. 11 Joanna R. Quinn - 9781781955314 Downloaded from Elgar Online at 11/29/2021 08:59:34AM via free access