A Critical Theory of Reparative Justice

Abstract

Over the past decades, post-atrocity justice debates have expanded their focus from the Nuremberg legacy of individual prosecutions to include a concern for a number of related issues. A great deal of the contemporary literature provides comparative assessments of the possibilities and limitations of trials and truth commissions, the viability of programs to consolidate the rule of law, and more explicitly normative explorations over the status and desirability of reconciliation and forgiveness. 1 There has been comparatively little work done, however, on reparations for victims of recent (rather than historical) conflicts. 2 The lack of conceptual clarity about what exactly reparations are for -are they meant to return victims to the status quo ante, serve as a moral repudiation of the past, enable once-oppressed groups to achieve self-actualization, or something else? -has meant that reparations programs risk becoming normatively confused and practically ineffective.This article clarifies the scope of reparations and their contributions by outlining a critical theory of reparative justice for transitional societies emerging from a recent history of political violence. As a critical theory, it seeks to provide a normative scheme for reparations that promotes policies furthering individual autonomy that are compatible with social justice and equality. It goes beyond liberal theory, as I will show, by emphasizing the fundamental intersubjective nature of reparative justice, from which certain types of policies follow. I anchor the theory within contemporary critical theory debates over recognition and redistribution. For the purposes of this essay, transitional democracies are nations emerging from a recent history of violence or authoritarian rule and moving in a broadly positive, liberal democratic normative direction. Reparations are understood as those policies and initiatives that attempt to restore to victims to their sense of dignity and moral worth and eliminate the social disparagement and economic marginalization that accompanied their targeting, with the goal of returning their status of citizens.The article begins by sketching Bernard Boxhill's influential liberal theory of reparations. I then move on to outlining a normative framework for understanding the goals of reparations, and argue for the necessity of both material and symbolic elements to work toward what Nancy Fraser has termed 'status parity.' Such parity requires that certain concerns about economic marginalization (objective conditions) and identity-based disparagement (subjective conditions) be addressed. Drawing from this, in the following section I outline the theory as consisting of four ideal-typical dimensions -'symbolic' and 'material' along one pole (concerned with the form of acknowledgement) and 'collective' and 'individual' along the other (regarding recipients). This four-fold rubric provides us with a clearer understanding of the possibilities and limitations of reparative measures. I illustrate these dimensions through a numb...

A Stereoscopic Approach to Distinctions of Justice

“…and "what is justice?" 13 Certainly, the contents of justice, i.e., what counts as just, are considered debatable and deconstructible. 14 However, justice as such, despite its terminological elusiveness, enjoys the discursive status of the normatively unchallenged.…”

“…Through adjectival specifications which make distinctions of justice and subjects/agents entitled to it visible, theory and research examine: cosmopolitan justice (see, e.g., Callegaro, and Marcucci [10]); multicultural justice (concerning rights of cultural groups); retributive justice (regarding punishment or blame); distributive justice (reshuffling of material sources on grounds of social priorities, individual need or desert); discursive justice (P. 43) [11]; transnational justice (P. 301) [12]; comparative and noncomparative justice 29 ; reparative justice (P. 208) [13]; meta-political justice and reflexive justice [14]; military justice [15]; epistemic justice (P. 154) [16]; 30 and transitional justice (P. 492) [17] 31 -just to name a few indicatively.…”

“…Transferred to the domain of reparative justice the scope of social justice makes reparations an issue of attention to victims of violations that occur domestically or are introterritorial in specific countries. 37 The normative scheme of relevance is that of "policies furthering individual autonomy that are compatible with social justice and equality" (P. 208, emph mine) [13]. A geo-politically sensitive cosmopolitan justice, a more ec-centric cosmopolitan justice, in synergy 36 Nor will they fit in the "social relations" framework of the self-standing justice (see above quotation from Forst) and in the misrecognition/ exclusion framework that has now dominated preoccupations with justice by various disciplines.…”

Justice, culture and the political determinants of indigenous Australian health

“…Reparation implies an inclusive re-conceptualization of indigenous citizenship, allowing a society to examine ‘the boundaries of the “we”, to reconceptualise its sense of itself ’ (Verdeja, 2008: 218). It privileges equal human dignity over charitable obligations to the poor as a public policy foundation and provides grounds to challenge Verdeja’s (2008) assumption that a:Lack of conceptual clarity about what exactly reparations are for – are they meant to return victims to the status quo ante, serve as a moral repudiation of the past, enable once-oppressed groups to achieve self-actualization, or something else? – has meant that reparations programs risk becoming normatively confused and practically ineffective.Verdeja (2008: 208)…”

“…It privileges equal human dignity over charitable obligations to the poor as a public policy foundation and provides grounds to challenge Verdeja's (2008) assumption that a:…”