Justice in Reparations: The Cost of Memory and the Value of Talk (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Limits of Property Reparations
Ssrn Electronic Journal, 2005
One of life's cruelest lessons is that history repeats itself. Forcible and inhumane expropriations of property by morally corrupt nations is a particularly unfortunate example of this lesson. Human history is replete with examples of unjustified expropriations of property by conquering states and other transitory regimes. Only in modern times, however, have nations attempted systematically to remedy historical injustices by providing reparations to the dispossessed owners or their successors. From the aboriginal peoples of the Antipodes to the Native Americans of Canada and the U.S. to the European victims of the Nazi Germany and Soviet communism, groups of people who were stripped of their land and possessions by fraud or force are demanding, and in many cases getting, reparations for these injustices. The thesis of this paper is that the case for reparations for such expropriations of property is highly tenuous, both morally and in practical terms. Reparations claims in general face two serious challenges: human irrationality and the effects of time. While these challenges are not necessarily insuperable, they are formidable. Most claims are made for reparations for past expropriations are unable satisfactorily to respond to these challenges. As a result, in my view, reparations in the form of specific restitution aimed at rectifying past injustices should be paid only in limited circumstances. This is especially true where the act(s) of expropriation were
The Potential for Redress: Reparations and Large-Scale Displacement
In this chapter I take a closer look at reparations in the context of large-scale displacement, focusing in particular on the idea that reparations programs should provide specific redress for displacement, independent from redress for other human rights violations. I focus on four central themes or questions connected to the idea of reparations for displacement: (1) what reparations should look like in the context of redress for largescale displacement, (2) how to define displacement and whether the concept as it currently exists within the international protection discourse and practice can serve as a basis for reparations, (3) who the stakeholders are in a reparations effort, and (4) what the redress should be for (material losses, psychological suffering, etc.). In the last section, I discuss the wisdom and feasibility of reparations for large-scale displacement in fragile state contexts and in situations where extreme poverty and widespread deprivation prevail.
Negotiating Reparation Rights: The Participatory and Symbolic Quotients
With each new transitional justice experience, the centrality and importance of providing reparations to victims becomes more evident. Reparations include both pecuniary payments and non-pecuniary goods and services to redress serious harms caused by political violence and conflict. They also signal the condemnation of the underlying crimes that caused such harm. Correspondingly, truth commissions typically recommend that governments institute reparations programs. Yet, when governments take up these recommendations, they face difficult implementation decisions. This reality is particularly true with regard to the distribution of individualized economic reparations as a response to widespread political violence, such as that caused by apartheid, armed conflict, repressive and authoritarian regimes, and other situations that leave a large universe of victims with diverse types of harms and suffering. Because of the extraordinary nature of such situations, governments generally opt fo...
Responsibility for Historical Injustices: Reconceiving the Case for Reparations
Journal of Law and Politics, 2006
I. Introduction "We will have to repent. .. not only for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people." [FN1][FN1] The twentieth century ended with the vindication of many of its most mistreated victims' cries for reparation. [FN2][FN2] Holocaust survivors retrieved over $8 billion in assets frozen in bank accounts or looted by the Nazis; [FN3][FN3] Japanese Americans interned during World War II received compensation from the U.S. government; [FN4][FN4] Chile compensated descendants of Pinochet's victims; [FN5][FN5] Japan redressed Korean "comfort women"; [FN6][FN6] and Canada paid damages to Aboriginals for forced assimilation of their children. [FN7][FN7] Absent from the list was the longest suffering and most visible of groups seeking repair-African Americans. [FN8][FN8] *184 Embarrassed by the satisfaction of these other victims' claims, opponents of Black reparations are left to find a legitimate ground upon which to distinguish the claims of contemporary African Americans. To this end, they construe the 140-year-long failure to offer repair not as the egregiously lengthy omission that it is, but instead as the feature that would render moot any entitlement to redress. [FN9][FN9] Thus, the common rejoinder to pleas for Black reparations has opponents protesting that they never owned slaves, and so they should not be made to pay for those who did. [FN10][FN10] *185 Besides, they continue, the slaves are long dead and the effects of slavery now nonexistent, [FN11][FN11] so there would not be anyone who could legitimately claim compensation anyway. [FN12][FN12] The opposition to Black reparations thus focuses on the temporal dislocation between slavery and the present, but the argument loses none of its force when applied to more recent injustices. After all, "righteous gentiles" in Germany did not exterminate Jews; [FN13][FN13] most Japanese never availed themselves of the "comfort" of Korean prostitutes; [FN14][FN14] and many Chileans ardently resisted Pinochet's rule. [FN15][FN15] If opponents of Black *186 reparations are correct to insist that an individual may be held responsible, and hence liable, only for transgressions in which he participated directly, then none of these reparations programs is justifiable. Supporters of Black reparations, or "reparationists," [FN16][FN16] have largely remained silent in the face of this challenge to their campaign. [FN17][FN17] Instead, the recent reparations literature is rife with internal debates regarding whether legal claims should be framed in the language of compensation or restitution;
Reparations: The Problem of Social Dominance
2016
In theory, reparations provide redress for past injustices. They reflect political attempts to seek to balance the scales of justice in the wake of crimes against humanity, gross human rights abuses, and other tortious state action. As one of the more politically salient legal academic subjects, however, it is clear that the sociopolitical processes within and between states greatly influence when, why, and how reparations are used. Reparations theorists have done an excellent job developing vital models for use by states to provide warranted redress. Roy L. Brooks and Eric Yamamoto, both of whom have contributed to this journal in the past, have developed the Atonement and Social Healing models of reparations respectively.
Les Ateliers de l'éthique/The Ethics Forum, 2018
Prevailing connotations of reconciliation orbit concord or harmonious coexistence, meaning that concern for justice is necessarily subordinated to a more casually pragmatic peace. Bringing justice considerations to the fore means focusing on reparations as a key element of reconciliation's suite of activities – but reparations are necessarily a matter of process, which precludes considering elements of the 'package' in isolation from one another, as is the case with traditional evaluative criteria of motivation or proportion. Accordingly, this article proposes that reparations are better framed as a considered reaction to the unjust allocation of burdens, so that subsequent reallocations serve justice by answering the needs and demands of survivors. Taking cues from a variety of sources both within and beyond the transitional justice literature, the work at hand attempts just such a retrospective reframing by looking at a recently completed Canadian reparations process: the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA).
Routledge Handbook of Ethics and Public Policy (edited by Annabelle Lever and Andrei Poama)
The issue of redressing historical wrongs has received much recent attention in political theory, sparking a heated debate over the normative reasons for repairing past injustices. Although questions of justification are important and stimulating, they do not exhaust the range of pressing normative challenges that reparations raise. In this paper, we concentrate on the largely neglected ethical issues arising in the process of devising reparations programmes. When the ethical issues surrounding the design of reparations programmes are ignored, their implementation is likely to leave the injustice in need of repair unscathed and – even worse – compound existing forms of exclusion, power imbalances, and marginalisation. In light of this, we identify three ethical concerns that should be faced while designing reparations programmes. The first issue – call it the problem of political instrumentalization – revolves around a worry often expressed by reparation claimants and victims of injustice, i.e., that reparations can seem to be a way for the governments to legitimize their political power, rather than to achieve justice. This worry seems to be particularly well-founded when the very content of reparations is decided without listening to what “victims” of injustice would regard as an appropriate form of reparation for the injustice they suffered from. We argue that in order not to turn reparations programmes into political tools, such programmes should actively involve claimants. A second issue – call it the problem of exclusion – also arises from a worry that real world reparations claimants express, and has to do with the documentation and filing process. In devising reparations programs, it is necessary to implement procedures to determine who has a valid claim and put up safeguards against fraud. Yet due to short-sightedness, excessive rule-boundedness, or poor procedural design, individuals with seemingly valid claims may be turned away. Though outcomes like these are not always foreseen, they can also signify bad intentions, and in the extreme case, there may emerge a perceived “hierarchy of victims” based on whose claim is recognized and whose is not. A final issue – call it the problem of inclusion – arises because, quite naturally, not all individuals with a potential claim to redress will be actively mobilized in making a reparations demand. For some individuals, this is because they themselves are reparations critics, thus it is natural to not be mobilized in making a reparations demand. There may also be conflicts that mirror power imbalances within the group, purely substantive disagreements about what reparative justice demands, indifference, and lack of awareness as to the fact that a reparations movement exists. Do the mobilized individuals who enjoy political clout and legitimacy have standing to claim redress on behalf of the entire group? The arguments of the paper are made with reference to a wide range of real-world cases.
Reparations: a radical way forward?
The unequal impacts of COVID-19 and climate change, and the ongoing racial violence and structural discrimination illuminated by the Movement for Black Lives, have exposed the inequalities and injustices still faced by so many around the world. The long shadows of colonialism and plantation slavery linking injustice in the here and now to before are clear. And whilst liberal institutions demand equality for some, they have continually denied calls for reparations. However, these calls do not go away. Arguments for various forms of reparation are gaining support across the world and will continue to return to haunt the institutions of liberal governance in the coming years.