Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice
Published on 13. November 2025
Book
Hardback
1168 pages
978-0-19-870435-5 (ISBN)
Description
The Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice is an authoritative guide to the rapidly growing domain of transitional justice-the practices and processes of reckoning pursued in the aftermath of historic injustice. Since the neologism's coining in the late 1990s, "transitional justice" has become one of the 21st century's most influential practices of international humanitarianism. However, transitional justice projects often conceal the very violence they are intended to address - or even inflict further violence on victims of atrocities.
Across 48 genre-bending chapters, the Handbook explores, articulates, and advances a multifaceted critique of transitional justice. Ranging innovatively across space and time, it interrogates the nature and legacies of the "justice cascade" that the prosecution of international crimes is said to have inspired. An interdisciplinary cast of leading scholars questions the meaning and efficacy of transitional justice's modalities, which range from archives to courts; from memorials to reparations. In so doing, this volume's authors critically challenge the panglossian orthodoxies that have accumulated and ossified around efforts to come to terms with violent pasts, from colonialism to genocide. This global endeavor is not one of tear-down, however. Rather, it points toward a reimagined project that is more clear-eyed about the promises of transitional justice-and its inherent limits.
A definitive work on the subject, The Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice is essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners interested in practices of reckoning.
Across 48 genre-bending chapters, the Handbook explores, articulates, and advances a multifaceted critique of transitional justice. Ranging innovatively across space and time, it interrogates the nature and legacies of the "justice cascade" that the prosecution of international crimes is said to have inspired. An interdisciplinary cast of leading scholars questions the meaning and efficacy of transitional justice's modalities, which range from archives to courts; from memorials to reparations. In so doing, this volume's authors critically challenge the panglossian orthodoxies that have accumulated and ossified around efforts to come to terms with violent pasts, from colonialism to genocide. This global endeavor is not one of tear-down, however. Rather, it points toward a reimagined project that is more clear-eyed about the promises of transitional justice-and its inherent limits.
A definitive work on the subject, The Oxford Handbook of Transitional Justice is essential reading for students, scholars, and practitioners interested in practices of reckoning.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 251 mm
Width: 181 mm
Thickness: 65 mm
Weight
2346 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-870435-5 (9780198704355)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Jens Meierhenrich, London School of Economics, Alexander Laban Hinton, Rutgers University, Lawrence Douglas, Amherst College
Content
I
INTRODUCTION
1: Jens Meierhenrich, Alexander Laban Hinton, and Lawrence Douglas: The Critique of Transitional Justice
II
TELEOLOGIES, OR: THE ENDS OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE
2: Claire Moon: What We Talk About When We Talk about Transitional JusticeDLAnd What We Don>'t
3: Adam Sitze: The Hopes of Transitional Justice
4: Andrew Woolford: Reparative Governmentalities in Transitional Justice
5: Makau W. Mutua: A Problem of Utopia: Human Rights and Transitional Justice
6: Alexander Keller Hirsch: Mourning in Transitional Justice
7: Chigbo Arthur Anyaduba, Benjamin Maiangwa: Memory/Remedy: The Soothsayer's Practice
8: Oliver P. Richmond: Peace and Transitional Justice
III
TECHNOLOGIES, OR: THE MEANS OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE
9: Milena Ang, Monika Nalepa: What Quantitative and Formal Methods Teach Us about Transitional Justice
10: John Torpey: The Justice of Reparations
11: Nick Smith: Apologies and Transitional Justice: Myths, Complexities, and Warnings
12: Jamie Rowen: Rethinking Transitional Justice with the Insights of Political Sociology
13: Diane M. Nelson: Making Visible: Mathematics and Transitional Justice
14: Sarah Wagner, Maria Alexandra Lopez-Cerquera, Sarah L. Richardson: Technoscientific Truth-Making: Forensic Science and the Politics of Recognition
15: Joachim J. Savelsberg: Media and Transitional Justice
16: Nancy Amoury Combs: The Facts of Transitional Justice
17: Jelena Suboti'c: The International Entrepreneurs of Transitional Justice
18: Geoff Dancy, Kathryn Sikkink: The Data of Transitional Justice
IV
TOPOGRAPHIES, OR: THE SITES OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE
19: Judith Resnik: Courts in the United States: A Template and a Site of Transitional Justice, Collapsing as a Model
20: Anuradha Chakravarty: Transitional Justice of the Grassroots: A Comparative Survey
21: Nigel Eltringham: Local/e
22: Leena Grover: Managerialism at the United Nations
23: Catherine Cole: Performance Matters in Transitional Times
24: Marie Berry, Milli Lake, Jemima Ackah-Arthur: Gendering Transitional Justice
25: Henry Redwood: Archiving Justice
26: Laia Balcells, Elsa Voytas: What Difference Do Museums Make?
27: Jonas Bens: The Affects of Transitional Justice
28: Carrol Clarkson: The Aesthetics of Transitional Justice
29: Tamara Tro%st: History Textbooks and Transitional Justice
30: Leigh A. Payne, Gabriel Pereira, Laura Bernal-Bermudez: The Business of Transitional Justice
V
TRAJECTORIES, OR: THE DYNAMICS OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE
31: Devin O. Pendas: Just Transitions
32: Marcos Zunino: Haunted by Three Spirits: The Afterlives of Past, Present, and Future Transitional Justice
33: Richard Ashby Wilson, Vladimir Petrovi'c: Contesting Histories: The Historical Accounts of Transitional Justice Institutions
34: Chris Cunneen: Settler Colonial States and Transitional Justice
35: Marita Eastmond, Johanna Mannergren Selimovic: Silence and Transitional Justice
36: Cyanne E. Loyle, Christian Davenport: Patterns of Injustice
37: Briony Jones, Julie Bernath: Resistance and Transitional Justice
38: Pascha Bueno-Hansen: Heteronormativity and Transitional Justice
39: Paul Gready: From Transitional to Transformative Justice
VI
TEMPORALITIES, OR: THE HISTORIES OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE
40: Zinaida Miller: Transitional Justice Temporalities
41: Adriaan Lanni: Transitional Justice in the Ancient World
42: Jenny Benham, Jamie Smith: Was There Transitional Justice in the Medieval World?
43: Kim Christian Priemel: Genealogies of Transitional Justice
44: Kamari Maxine Clarke: Transitional Justice in African Contexts through the Institutionalization of Emotional Affects
45: Naomi Roht-Arriaza: Transitional Justice in Latin America
46: Alexander Laban Hinton: Orientalism and the Transitional Justice Imaginary in Asia
47: Annette Weinke: Transitional Justice in Europe
48: Noha Aboueldahab: Transitional Justice in the Arab Region: An Intellectual and Practical Inquiry
INTRODUCTION
1: Jens Meierhenrich, Alexander Laban Hinton, and Lawrence Douglas: The Critique of Transitional Justice
II
TELEOLOGIES, OR: THE ENDS OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE
2: Claire Moon: What We Talk About When We Talk about Transitional JusticeDLAnd What We Don>'t
3: Adam Sitze: The Hopes of Transitional Justice
4: Andrew Woolford: Reparative Governmentalities in Transitional Justice
5: Makau W. Mutua: A Problem of Utopia: Human Rights and Transitional Justice
6: Alexander Keller Hirsch: Mourning in Transitional Justice
7: Chigbo Arthur Anyaduba, Benjamin Maiangwa: Memory/Remedy: The Soothsayer's Practice
8: Oliver P. Richmond: Peace and Transitional Justice
III
TECHNOLOGIES, OR: THE MEANS OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE
9: Milena Ang, Monika Nalepa: What Quantitative and Formal Methods Teach Us about Transitional Justice
10: John Torpey: The Justice of Reparations
11: Nick Smith: Apologies and Transitional Justice: Myths, Complexities, and Warnings
12: Jamie Rowen: Rethinking Transitional Justice with the Insights of Political Sociology
13: Diane M. Nelson: Making Visible: Mathematics and Transitional Justice
14: Sarah Wagner, Maria Alexandra Lopez-Cerquera, Sarah L. Richardson: Technoscientific Truth-Making: Forensic Science and the Politics of Recognition
15: Joachim J. Savelsberg: Media and Transitional Justice
16: Nancy Amoury Combs: The Facts of Transitional Justice
17: Jelena Suboti'c: The International Entrepreneurs of Transitional Justice
18: Geoff Dancy, Kathryn Sikkink: The Data of Transitional Justice
IV
TOPOGRAPHIES, OR: THE SITES OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE
19: Judith Resnik: Courts in the United States: A Template and a Site of Transitional Justice, Collapsing as a Model
20: Anuradha Chakravarty: Transitional Justice of the Grassroots: A Comparative Survey
21: Nigel Eltringham: Local/e
22: Leena Grover: Managerialism at the United Nations
23: Catherine Cole: Performance Matters in Transitional Times
24: Marie Berry, Milli Lake, Jemima Ackah-Arthur: Gendering Transitional Justice
25: Henry Redwood: Archiving Justice
26: Laia Balcells, Elsa Voytas: What Difference Do Museums Make?
27: Jonas Bens: The Affects of Transitional Justice
28: Carrol Clarkson: The Aesthetics of Transitional Justice
29: Tamara Tro%st: History Textbooks and Transitional Justice
30: Leigh A. Payne, Gabriel Pereira, Laura Bernal-Bermudez: The Business of Transitional Justice
V
TRAJECTORIES, OR: THE DYNAMICS OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE
31: Devin O. Pendas: Just Transitions
32: Marcos Zunino: Haunted by Three Spirits: The Afterlives of Past, Present, and Future Transitional Justice
33: Richard Ashby Wilson, Vladimir Petrovi'c: Contesting Histories: The Historical Accounts of Transitional Justice Institutions
34: Chris Cunneen: Settler Colonial States and Transitional Justice
35: Marita Eastmond, Johanna Mannergren Selimovic: Silence and Transitional Justice
36: Cyanne E. Loyle, Christian Davenport: Patterns of Injustice
37: Briony Jones, Julie Bernath: Resistance and Transitional Justice
38: Pascha Bueno-Hansen: Heteronormativity and Transitional Justice
39: Paul Gready: From Transitional to Transformative Justice
VI
TEMPORALITIES, OR: THE HISTORIES OF TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE
40: Zinaida Miller: Transitional Justice Temporalities
41: Adriaan Lanni: Transitional Justice in the Ancient World
42: Jenny Benham, Jamie Smith: Was There Transitional Justice in the Medieval World?
43: Kim Christian Priemel: Genealogies of Transitional Justice
44: Kamari Maxine Clarke: Transitional Justice in African Contexts through the Institutionalization of Emotional Affects
45: Naomi Roht-Arriaza: Transitional Justice in Latin America
46: Alexander Laban Hinton: Orientalism and the Transitional Justice Imaginary in Asia
47: Annette Weinke: Transitional Justice in Europe
48: Noha Aboueldahab: Transitional Justice in the Arab Region: An Intellectual and Practical Inquiry