1st Edition

Reframing Transitional Justice Innovations, Boundaries, and Refractions

Edited By Mark A. Drumbl, Kirsten J. Fisher Copyright 2026
344 Pages 25 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

344 Pages 25 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

344 Pages 25 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book challenges the simplicity, predestination, and self-evident nature of contemporary narratives of transitional justice.  Transitional justice is the field of study that examines how states should reckon with massive human rights abuses. The book upends these assumptive narratives on three crucial fronts. The first front is that of  innovations . Here,... Read more

 1.     Introduction

Mark A. Drumbl and Kirsten J. Fisher

2. Transitional Justice, Memorialization, and Artificial Intelligence

Colleen Murphy

 

3. Algorithms, Reparations, Repetitions: How Digital Platforms Erode the Aims of Transitional Justice

Juan Espíndola

 

4. Algorithmic Justice: Digital Investigations and Transitional Justice

Christopher Lamont

 

5. Bridging Justice and Technology: Exploring the Integration of Information and Communication Technologies in Colombia’s Transitional Justice Process

Laura Gianna Guntrum, Maike Salzmann, and Christian Reuter

 

6. Memory Workshops in Colombia: Co-creative and Inclusive Community Memory Building

Daniel Gómez-Uribe

 

7. Animals, War, and Multispecies Transitional Justice

Rachel Killean

 

8. Transitional Justice, Temporalities, and the Restitution of Cultural Objects

Lucas Lixinski

 

9. Nonchalance and the Fascist Gaze

Mark A. Drumbl

 

10. Escaping Genocide’s Gravity

Timothy William Waters

 

11.  Abolishing the Family Policing System as Transitional and Racial Justice

Tiffany D. Atkins

 

12. Liberian Peace Huts as Archetypes of Neotraditional Practices Advancing Gender Justice in Transitional Societies

Loyce Mrewa

13. Justice in Transition? The Challenge of Feminist Politics for Transitional Justice

Kirsten Campbell

14.  Beyond Democracy: Alternative Transitions in an Age of Democratic Backsliding

C. William Vardy

15.      Epilogue
Luke Moffett

Biography

Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor and Director, Transnational Law Institute, at Washington and Lee University. He has held visiting appointments and has taught at law schools worldwide, including Queen’s University Belfast, Oxford University (University College), Université de Paris II (Panthéon-Assas), Free University of Amsterdam, University of Melbourne, Masaryk University (Czechia), and John Cabot University in Rome. His work has been relied upon by national and international courts, and he has served as defense lawyer in Rwandan genocide trials; co-authored an amicus brief to the International Criminal Court in the Ongwen case; and been an expert in litigation including on international terrorism, with the UN in matters involving child soldiers, and with the UN Human Rights Council in the drafting of a global convention to criminalise racist hate speech.  He is editor-in-chief of the International Criminal Law Review.

Kirsten J. Fisher is Associate Professor of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. She has held visiting and research positions at McGill University, the University of Helsinki, the University of Ottawa, and KU Leuven. She works on issues of post-atrocity justice, theories of international criminal law, and post-conflict social reconstruction. Much of her work is grounded in field research in northern Uganda.

This provocative and timely volume productively confronts the transitional justice paradigm with trenchant reappraisal in light of emerging digital technologies, structural violence, and theories of justice from the periphery. It asks us to rethink how, when, as well as by and for whom is transitional justice made accessible.

Laurel Fletcher, Chancellor’s Clinical Professor of Law, University of California, Berkeley (USA)

Reframing Transitional Justice is an interdisciplinary collection, covering multiple cases, that gives transitional justice exactly what it needs—a good shake. This shake-up questions transitional justice as a field and set of tools that have come of age, become too formulaic and too aligned to the status quo, while suggesting alternative futures. Critique is balanced with proposition. The result is a wonderful set of provocations to us all, and one that I recommend to all those seeking to shape a creative, responsive, and questioning transitional justice.

 Professor Paul Gready, Director, Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York (UK)