Brianne McGonigle Leyh: "No Justice, No Peace: The United States of America Needs Transitional Justice"

Brianne McGonigle Leyh (associate professor at Utrecht University) wrote a blog post on the current unrest in the United Stated and the need for transitional justice on Opinio Juris.

She starts her blog with "In the last 10 days, anger and unrest have spread across the United States. Institutions have buckled, streets are burning, citizens attacked." In the introduction, she explains the use of the term transitional justice. "As a concept, it arose in the 1980s and 1990s following the fall of authoritarian regimes in South America. It has since been taken up by the UN, States, and civil society organizations around the world," she writes. Four pillars of transitional justice are: accountability; truth-telling; reparations; and guarantees of non-repetition.

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When it comes to taking further steps, McGonigle Leyh writes: "When carried out properly, these processes have the potential to signal a clear break from past abusive practices so that trust between different groups in society and the state can be (re)established. They are not a remedy for all of a society’s problems. Rather, they are small steps, part of a larger whole, in addressing past abuses and injustices."

These processes have the potential to signal a clear break from past abusive practices so that trust between different groups in society and the state can be (re)established.

Brianne McGonigle Leyh is an Associate Professor of Human Rights and Global Justice at Utrecht University. She is one of the leaders of the university's new research platform Contesting Governance. She has published widely on accountability, truth-telling, reparations and guarantees of non-repetition.