Punishment, Reconciliation, and Democratic Deliberation

Abstract

"From Chile to Cambodia to South Africa to the United States, societies and international institutions are deciding how they should reckon with past atrocities - including war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, rape, and torture - that may have been committed by a government against its own citizens, by its opponents, or by combatants in an international armed conflict. In deciding whether and how to address these political crimes, it is commonly believed that trials and punishment, on the one hand, and reconciliation, on the other, are fundamentally at odds with each other, that a nation must choose one or the other, and that reconciliation is morally superior to punishment. For example, in No Future Without Forgiveness, Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu evaluates the successes and failures of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The chair of the TRC, Tutu defends the Commission’s granting of amnesty to wrongdoers who revealed the truth about their pasts, and he lauds those victims who forgave their abusers. While recognizing that a country must reckon with its past evils rather than adopt “National Amnesia,” Tutu nevertheless rejects what he calls the “Nuremberg trial paradigm.” He believes that victims should not press charges against those who violated their rights, and the state should not make the accused “run the gauntlet of the normal judicial process” and impose punishment on those found guilty."