ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to answer several questions, including whether criminal trials promote justice at the expense of reconciliation, or whether truth commissions and amnesty promote peace at the expense of justice. The answers remain contextually sensitive and contingent, in part because there is no broad consensus around the effectiveness—even the legitimacy—of transitional justice. And it is not at all clear which way human rights point. Finding a way to deal effectively with atrocities of the past is an immensely complicated if not impossible task. Most studies of transitional justice have underscored the importance of balancing the duty of punishing human rights violations, a retrospective interest, with the duty of preventing them, a prospective one. Equally frustrating is the attempt to strike a proper balance between preserving peace and promoting justice. Just as making moral and political choices in confronting a legacy of abuse is painful and controversial, so is the task of choosing between criminal accountability in the courts and justice through reconciliation in the community.
