After Justice Has Been Done: The Benefit of Hindsight: Foreword

Abstract

The international legal and political community stresses the role of international criminal trials in providing justice in the wake of atrocity. A criminal trial of those most responsible, it is maintained, will end impunity, provide retribution, bring justice to victims and give them a voice, contribute to a collective memory that will make reconciliation possible, and therefore (re-)establish the conditions for a better and peaceful future in which all can share. It is in this sense that trials are part of what is widely understood as transitional justice, but that does not mean that we can equate justice with the outcome of a criminal trial. That would be to use the word in its most narrow sense, to endow it with the broadest of optimistic connotations and thereby create expectations that are impossible to meet. Bringing the offender to justice is part, but only part, of doing justice to feelings, perceptions, expectations and emotions about what is just.