United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics, and Pragmatics

Author: Zachary Daniel Kaufman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780190655488

Published In: March 2017
Format: Paperback
Jurisdiction: U.S. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only
Hardback Edition ISBN: 9780190243494

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In United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics, and Pragmatics, Zachary D. Kaufman explores the U.S. government's support for, or opposition to, certain transitional justice institutions. By first presenting an overview of possible responses to atrocities (such as war crimes tribunals) and then analyzing six historical case studies, Kaufman evaluates why and how the United States has pursued particular transitional justice options since World War II.

This book challenges the "legalist" paradigm, which postulates that liberal states pursue war crimes tribunals because their decision-makers hold a principled commitment to the rule of law. Kaufman develops an alternative theory-"prudentialism"-which contends that any state (liberal or illiberal) may support bona fide war crimes tribunals. More generally, prudentialism proposes that states pursue transitional justice options, not out of strict adherence to certain principles, but as a result of a case-specific balancing of politics, pragmatics, and normative beliefs. Kaufman tests these two competing theories through the U.S. experience in six contexts: Germany and Japan after World War II, the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, the 1990-1991 Iraqi offenses against Kuwaitis, the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Kaufman demonstrates that political and pragmatic factors featured as or more prominently in U.S. transitional justice policy than did U.S. government officials' normative beliefs. Kaufman thus concludes that, at least for the United States, prudentialism is superior to legalism as an explanatory theory in transitional justice policymaking.

List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Citations

Glossary

Actors

Chapter I: Introduction

Chapter II: Overview of Transitional Justice Options and the United States Role in Transitional Justice

Chapter III: Competing Theories of United States Policy on Transitional Justice: Legalism Versus Prudentialism

Chapter IV: The United States Role in Transitional Justice for Germany

Chapter V: The United States Role in Transitional Justice for Japan

Chapter VI: The United States Role in Transitional Justice for Libya, Iraq, and the Former Yugoslavia