The goals of transitional justice advocacy and institutions are commonly portrayed as mutually reinforcing and complementary. This article argues that in evaluating the political significance of transitional justice, more attention should be given to their irreconcilable goals. This analysis is informed by the work of legal scholars and political theorists that have drawn attention to the dual role of law in relation to violence. While law can be a tool for regulating violence and exposing abuses of power, law is also utilized to obfuscate and legitimate abuses of power. Similarly, transitional justice institutions aim to challenge the legitimacy of prior political practices by confronting denial and transforming the terms of debate on past abuses, yet they also seek to establish their own legitimacy by minimizing the challenge that they pose to dominant frameworks for interpreting the past. This article demonstrates how a better understanding of this tension sheds light on problematic assumptions and unacknowledged trade-offs associated with the claims regarding the role of transitional justice institutions in advancing political reconciliation through measures designed to counter denial, expand dialogue, and address trauma. It concludes by discussing the implications of the analysis for transitional justice policy as well as debates on the general significance of expanding transitional justice advocacy.

Humanitarian and human rights movements have gained influence as impartial ethical responses to injustice and suffering, yet their claims to impartiality are commonly dismissed as misleading, naïve, or counterproductive. To date, little attention has been paid to the very different ways human rights and humanitarian movements have conceptualized impartiality in relation to distinct and conflicting activist goals. The contemporary role of impartial activism can be better understood by examining these historical differences and how they eroded as the two movements encountered and responded to challenging political dilemmas. This has contributed to a common formulation of impartial activism that paradoxically combines the transformative moral judgment associated with human rights and the pragmatic avoidance of judgment associated with humanitarianism. Focusing on advocacy for humanitarian intervention and transitional justice, the paper examines how this amalgam of idealism and pragmatism undermines the critical role and defining aspirations of both movements. It concludes by considering how humanitarian and human rights organizations might provoke and assess political responses to injustice by clarifying the limits of their distinct claims to impartiality.

How should state-sponsored atrocities be judged and remembered? This controversial question animates contemporary debates on transitional justice and reconciliation. This book reconsiders the legacies of two institutions that transformed the theory and practice of transitional justice. Whereas the Nuremberg Trials exemplified the promise of legalism and international criminal justice, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission promoted restorative justice and truth commissions. Leebaw argues that the two frameworks share a common problem: both rely on criminal justice strategies to investigate experiences of individual victims and perpetrators, which undermines their critical role as responses to systematic atrocities. Drawing on the work of influential transitional justice institutions and thinkers such as Judith Shklar, Hannah Arendt, José Zalaquett and Desmond Tutu, Leebaw offers a new approach to thinking about the critical role of transitional justice – one that emphasizes the importance of political judgment and investigations that examine complicity in, and resistance to, systematic atrocities.

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