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- Title
Transitional Justice and Judicial Activism--A Right to Accountability?
- Authors
Teitel, Ruti
- Abstract
Victims of systemic rights abuses, their families, and non-governmental organizations are turning to international and regional human rights tribunals to address the failure of states to investigate, prosecute, and remedy past human rights violations. In many cases this relates to acts that occurred decades ago and for which a previous repressive regime was responsible. In other cases there may be powerful interests within the state, such as the police or security service, that are complicit with the violations in question. This Article explores the historical and political contexts in which these cases have arisen, how the courts approach the question of state responsibility under the relevant human rights treaties (the American Convention on Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) and the implications for transitional justice, as they raise common issues of what makes for accountability following state wrongs. I argue that there is a new accountability emerging: one that is closely associated with global and international criminal justice, which raises issues that go to the relationship between the domestic, political, and judicial institutions engaged in transitional justice and the supranational tribunals in question. When issues in question involve violations that have occurred in the context of previous oppressive regimes, to what extent can supranational judicial intervention unblock or improve transitional justice processes? What are the risks of intervening in such processes, which often involve complex exercises in reconciliation and compromise between antagonists in past conflicts? What remedies are appropriate and legitimate given the relative competence and legitimacy of domestic institutions and supranational courts, understood in context? Moreover, which institution decides? At a time when such judicial intervention is gaining traction, this Article proposes principles that should be of relevance to transnational courts and other actors in their consideration of such problems.
- Subjects
TRANSITIONAL justice; POLITICAL questions &; judicial power; HUMAN rights violations; POLITICAL rights; EUROPEAN Convention on Human Rights
- Publication
Cornell International Law Journal, 2015, Vol 48, Issue 2, p385
- ISSN
0010-8812
- Publication type
Article