Transitional (In)justice : Normative Requirements, Political Commitments

In the difficult balance between justice and truth and in order to the ends of trans-national justice, the aim of the paper is to formulate a model of transi-tional justice that gives account of possible tensions and equilibriums between truth and justice, between retribution and restoration, memory and oblivion, past and present. It needs to be clarified what happens to truth when it is publicly recognised, when it is included in the cognitive public scene, and how this recognition affects politics. The comparison between a retributive paradigm of justice, that prescribes to punish those who are responsible for the violation, and a restorative one, focused on therapeutic and reparative dynamics aimed at reconciliation, leaves open theoretical and normative questions involving the meaning of retributive justice and its possible, or desirable, negotiability. From a more practical perspective too, attempts at balancing normative requirements and political commitments are unavoidable and dilemmatic.