Justice beyond Blame

• Author: Nenad Dimitrijević
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002706286952
• Published date: 01 June 2006
• Date: 01 June 2006
• Subject Matter: Articles

368

JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION, Vol. 50 No. 3, June 2006 368-382

DOI: 10.1177/0022002706286952

© 2006 Sage Publications

Justice beyond Blame

MORAL JUSTIFICATION OF

(THE IDEA OF) A TRUTH COMMISSION

NENAD DIMITRIJEVIC

´

Political Science Department

Central European University,Budapest, Hungary

Truth commissions have existed as mechanisms of transitional justice in some of the societies con-

fronted with legacies of the criminal past. The author focuses on the question of the foundational justifi-

cation of the idea of a truth commission. While recognizing the complexity and importance of moral and

political considerations that are conventionally invoked to justify the existence of this body, the author

aims at offering an alternative justificatory account. The main claim is that the specific task capable of

providing the ultimate justification of truth commissions consists of rebuilding the lost sense of justice in

the community of perpetrators.

Keywords: transitional justice; truth commission; justification; responsibility

After the change of regimes, the new proto-democratic order is, among other things,

confronted with the tasks of establishing the rule of law and guaranteeing basic rights

in a society in which these foundational features of democracy were either destroyed

or nonexistent. This complex task acquires yet another dimension in societies whose

immediate past has been marked not only by the authoritarian nature of the previous

regime but also by mass regime-sponsored crimes. The basic question is simple: does

the new political community, legitimized by its democratic intentions, need to reckon

with the crimes of the previous regime? Dilemmas that are brought up by this ques-

tion span legal, practical-political, and moral considerations. This should come as no

surprise, given that most often at issue are the crimes perpetrated in the name of a

whole political community or in the name of a group constitutive of that community.

Answers are sought between the poles of the policy of oblivion and the policy of an

open and multidimensional confrontation with the past.

Skeptics usually point to the contextual complexity of the democratic transition:

the new regime is confronted with multiple problems that burden the transitional

process with always new and often mutually contradictory political and economic

imperatives. In such a context, the demand to deal systematically—legally, morally,

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