ABSTRACT
Archbishop Desmond Tutu offers three premises for the conclusion that—at least during South Africa's transition—legal punishment of those who violate human rights is morally wrong. He asserts: punishment is retribution, retribution is vengeance, and vengeance is morally wrong. Tutu also endorses the credible threat of punishment as a social tool to encourage perpetrators to tell the truth about their wrongdoing. Martha Minow suggests that retribution is a kind of vengeance, but curbed by the intervention of neutral parties and bound by the rights of individuals and the principles of proportionality. Vengeance is personal in the sense that the avenger retaliates for something done antecedently to the individual or the group. Tutu proposes a moral argument against the "Nuremberg trial paradigm" for South Africa's transition and others like it. Tutu rejects retributive justice on the grounds that it prevents or impedes reconciliation.
