ABSTRACT
The way that governments treat their citizens has long been subject to review by courts and is the bedrock of the rule of law. This chapter draws a distinction between three different ways of understanding time: time as specific to the modern era, time as a specific moment in which the past is enacted again on the symbolic stage of the criminal trial and time as an articulation between space and the world-system. To reduce the moral weight of the past, the new order of historicity sets time aside to concentrate on the moment of the trial only. Complementarity introduces a new relationship between exteriority and interiority that characterizes a new way of looking at space and time: they are no longer mutually exclusive but may be combined in novel ways. The principle of complementarity, which builds a bridge directly between international institutions and national courts, reminds one of the connections that existed between Rome and the local churches.
