Foreword to Drexel Law Review Symposium on Transitional Justice

Abstract

This Foreword outlines the motivation for the Drexel Law Review's 2018 Symposium, entitled Times of Reckoning: Confronting the Legacies of Mass Abuse through Transitional Justice, and synthesizes the unifying themes and observations in the resultant volume published by the Drexel Law Review.

The aim of the Symposium was to gather leading transitional justice scholars and practitioners from around the world together to discuss the most pressing issues in the field, with a focus on more intentionally connecting theory and practice. The keynote speakers were two trailblazing jurists, Justice Richard Goldstone of South Africa and former Attorney General Thelma Aldana of Guatemala. The Symposium was organized around three panels that explored the diverse contexts in which transitional justice occurs, how transitioning societies memorialize past injustices, and the role that foreign courts can play in adjudicating human rights abuses.

Keywords: Transitional Justice, Human Rights, Memorialization, Collective Memory, Guatemala, South Africa, Post-Conflict Justice, Universal Jurisdiction, Foreign Courts

JEL Classification: K33