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Transitional Justice: At Multiple Cross-Roads

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2025

Diego MEJÍA-LEMOS*
Affiliation:
School of Law, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China
*

Abstract

Transitional justice’s nature has continued to evolve and, consequently, its scope has significantly widened, raising various unsettled issues. As this review essay observes, transitional justice itself has become conceptually “transitional”, undergoing profound transitions and doing so within an also increasingly and profoundly changing context. Also, as this essay contends, the orientation of those transitions lies at the core of competing visions for transitional justice as a whole. In this vein, as this essay further argues, two major trends seem to be emerging and giving shape to transitional justice’s ongoing transitions: firstly, a trend towards focusing on the (infra)structural dimension of transitional justice processes and thus aiming to reorient transitional justice towards addressing “(infra)structural” factors of (societal) change; and, secondly, a trend towards increasingly relying on public law, in both international and internal legal orders, as a framework to conceptually articulate and implement (infra)structural processes of change.

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Type
Notes and Comments
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Asian Society for International Law.

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References

1 Cheryl LAWTHER and Luke MOFFETT, eds., Research Handbook on Transitional Justice, 2nd ed. (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023); Daniëlla DAM-DE JONG and Britta SJÖSTEDT, eds., Research Handbook on International Law and Environmental Peacebuilding (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023); David BILCHITZ and Raisa CACHALIA, eds., Transitional Justice, Distributive Justice, and Transformative Constitutionalism: Comparing Colombia and South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023).

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3 Dam-de Jong and Sjöstedt, supra note 1 at 17–150, 152–303, and 304–426, respectively.

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7 Ibid., at 24.

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13 Ibid., at 249.

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17 Ibid., at 54.

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24 Ibid., at 118.

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26 Ibid., at 73.

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