Chapter 1 presents the main argument of Escaping Justice. Accounting for the demand for norm compliance and the domestic risks inherent in norm adoption, this chapter elaborates the ways in which governments strategically adapt transitional justice to advance state impunity. In making this argument I identify a growing global norm of accountability for human rights violations putting pressure on governments to hold perpetrators of wrongdoings to account. Adhering to international norms can carry domestic risks, particularly in cases where governments are culpable for wrongdoings. In responding to the risks of accountability, governments strategically adapt transitional justice to comply with international norms. I identify three strategies that governments use to advance impunity while seemingly complying with international norms, namely coercion, containment, and concession. These strategies are selected based on a government’s ability to control its norm response. The chapter closes with a discussion of the research methodology of the book and ethical considerations.

Post-genocide Rwanda serves as a case of strong institutional control in which the government engages transitional justice through a strategy of coercion. In this chapter I explore the Rwandan government’s response to international pressure for accountability. To advance government impunity, the government adopts a strategy of coercion, wherein a new transitional justice institution, gacaca, is implemented but subsequently monitored and controlled to advance state impunity and consolidate RPF control. The chapter begins with an overview of armed conflict in Rwanda with particular attention on the complexities of the violence experienced by individuals during the civil war, genocide, and at the hands of the RPF. I then discuss the government’s strategic adaptation of transitional justice to identify and evaluate the coercive strategy in which claims for government accountability are monitored and controlled. I explore the strategy of coercion in practice through an in-depth analysis of gacaca, which has aggressively pursued crimes of genocide while ignoring RPF abuses. To explore the coercion strategy beyond the case of Rwanda, I examine transitional justice in Burundi.

Northern Ireland typifies a highly constrained government. In this case, institutional constraints on the British government lead to a strategy of concession in which transition justice is offered to appease the demands of strong domestic constituencies without a genuine attempt to reckon with past wrongdoings by the British state. By engaging transitional justice for some emblematic cases and not others, the government further propagates the sectarian divisions that legitimate British control. The chapter begins with a discussion of the conflict in Northern Ireland and outlines the wrongdoings committed by the British state. I then evaluate the concessionary strategy that accommodates only certain demands for state accountability. Next is an evaluation of that strategy in practice through a focus on public inquiries and the Historical Enquiries Team. These mechanisms showcase the way certain events and experiences have been thoroughly investigated and adjudicated while other incidents have been obstructed or ignored. To explore the strategy beyond Northern Ireland, I examine transitional justice in the Central African Republic.

Uganda is a case of midrange institutional control in which transitional justice has been subsumed within existing state institutions through a strategy of containment. In this chapter I present the Ugandan government’s strategy wherein transitional justice is enmeshed within existing structures of power, which allows the government to monitor and control the risks of norm compliance. The chapter begins with a discussion of the history of armed conflict in Uganda, particularly the war against the Lord’s Resistance Army and the government’s abuse of Acholi civilians. I then examine the government’s adaptation of transitional justice to identify and evaluate the containment strategy in which the risks of accountability are managed by integrating transitional justice into government institutions controlled through patronage, functionally rendering impunity for the state. I explore the containment strategy through three components of transitional justice in Uganda: International Crimes Division, state-regulated customary justice practices, and the National Transitional Justice Policy. To explore the strategy beyond the case of Uganda, I examine transitional justice in Côte d’Ivoire.

In this introductory chapter I present the core tension in the study of transitional justice: the frequent failure of transitional justice to bring justice to victims of state violence. I question how governments escape justice in the age of accountability. The strategies through which a government adapts transitional justice to manage potentially risky demands for accountability have implications for who is held responsible for the atrocities of the past, a central factor for political order itself. This chapter engages the literature on norm compliance to situate my theory of strategic adaptation.

The findings of this book offer suggestions for future research as well as new directions for advocacy. The concluding chapter of the book presents a research agenda for understanding the strategic adaptation of international norms. The chapter also suggests policy prescriptions for those committed to advancing the accountability of states and holding government perpetrators of violence accountable for their actions.

Affordable access to quality health and care is generally recognised as a basic human need and one of the grand challenges society currently faces, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, the focus on public health is driving a predominantly human-centric approach to One Health initiatives. Furthermore, the concerted reliance on innovation and technology-driven solutions may exacerbate the problem. Without the appropriate legal and policy framework to incentivise and capture the social value of research and innovation, there is a risk the resulting solutions will fail to achieve the balance between animal, environment, and human health. This chapter presents a legally supported approach, informed by the intellectual property framework and the policy objectives of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and Value-Based Health and Care (VBHC) principles, to support the implementation of a true One Health framework. This enables the development of legal tools that will give credibility, legitimacy, and accountability to the design, development, and implementation of a sustainable One Health framework through meaningful and inclusive societal engagement.

In contemporary healthcare services, managers are required to create and support environments that are complex in nature and are subject to competing forces that place significant demands on both the system and individuals contributing to productivity. Often, people assume that being held to account is something negative that usually happens only when things go wrong. However, accountability can be viewed as something that can be utilised to ensure success. Holding to account can be difficult if the perceptions and expectations of management and staff differ. We cannot assume that people share the same understanding of what they are accountable for, or the standards expected of them, unless they are made explicit and clear.

This introduction to the book begins with a narrative of the prevalence of gun violence in the United States and the trafficking of gun violence into Mexico and Latin America. It canvasses the current statistics of gun-related murders, suicides, mass shootings, and school shootings compiled by the CDC, the Pew Research Institute, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Giffords Center, and other agencies collecting gun violence data. The introduction sets forth the themes of the book, including locating the landscape of firearms litigation in the history of mass tort litigation, the ineffectiveness of various gun regulatory initiatives, the historical immunity of the firearms industry from liability for gun harms, and the recent inroads on the ability to sue firearms defendants through the enactment of targeted consumer protection and public nuisance firearms accountability statutes. The introduction suggests the argument that the 1998 Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement demonstrated that impervious, dangerous product industries could finally be held accountable, and that the Sandy Hook Elementary School litigation marked a pivotal point in opening a pathway toward suing the firearms industry and holding it accountable for gun harms.

Most research on education governance begin with the premise that school boards are the natural default and that locally elected school boards must be defended. This chapter demonstrates why this assumption is wrong. I show that: (1) most voters don’t have school-aged kids and thus lack sufficient “skin in the game” to prioritize academic achievement; (2) voters don’t hold school board members accountable for student learning; and (3) local school board elections are uncompetitive, with nearly 80 percent of the turnover driven by incumbent retirements rather than Election Day defeats. Several case studies, focused on school districts in San Francisco (California) and Easta Ramapo (New York) illustrate why broken elections have negative impacts on education quality. At best, school board elections are extremely low-turnout affairs, in which a small and highly unrepresentative group of adults impose their parochial, self-interested, and often uninformed views on the rest of the community. At its worst, school district governance devolves into an absolute clown show, where performative politics takes precedence over serious policy meant to serve the academic interests of students.

The rise in the use of AI in most key areas of business, from sales to compliance to financial analysis, means that even the highest levels of corporate governance will be impacted, and that corporate leaders are duty-bound to manage both the responsible development and the legal and ethical use of AI. This transformation will directly impact the legal and ethical duties and best practices of those tasked with setting the ‘tone at the top’ and who are accountable for the firm’s success. Directors and officers will have to ask themselves to what extent should, or must, AI tools be used in both strategic business decision-making, as well as monitoring processes. Here we look at a number of issues that we believe are going to arise due to the greater use of generative AI. We consider what top management should be doing to ensure that all such AI tools used by the firm are safe and fit for purpose, especially considering avoidance of potential negative externalities. In the end, due to the challenges of AI use, the human component of top corporate decision-making will be put to the test, to prudentially thread the needle of AI use and to ensure the technology serves corporations and their human stakeholders instead of the other way around.

It is natural to see in the Republic’s concern with self-mastery a Platonic account of autonomy. But Plato’s understanding of self-rule in the Republic has more to do with cognition, and rather less to do with independent agency. Indeed, in the ethically motivated epistemology of the Republic, it is aiming at ideal knowledge that transforms one ethically and engenders many of the features centrally associated with the notion of ‘autonomy’. Being able to explain reality independently makes one independent of the illusions and confusions caused by pleasure, pains, and public pressures, and even restructures the desires, pleasures and other affects liable to arise. Moreover, the ability to give accounts is what makes us accountable to one another for our cognitive condition — and for the judgements, feelings and actions based on this.