Law, space, subject, object: locating transitional justice

Recent research suggests that, within five years of peace processes concluding, more than half of states will lapse back into conflict. This has led to arguments that traditional transitional justice models have proven unsuccessful. Much literature is dedicated to describing the problems which may affect these models’ outcomes. However, less attention has been paid to how and why these problems continue to arise. This paper proposes that a spatiotemporal analysis of the transitional justice space could begin to answer such questions. This approach is grounded in concepts from legal geography, including space, time, constitutivity, and complexity.

In legal geography, law is not an abstract object. Rather, law and space are mutually constitutive, with each being shaped by the other through a constant and dynamic process of iteration and reiteration. This paper proposes that observing this process can perhaps reveal connections between space, law, and the presumed subjects and objects of that law. The paper will explore transitional justice as a conceptual space and as a moment. It considers how transitional justice processes and mechanisms themselves may constitute multiple spaces – both physical and conceptual - and how these spaces evolve over time. This involves examining the complexities at play during transitional justice processes – not only the multiple international and domestic laws and legal systems, but also the intersecting cultures and customs which compete for primacy – and how these dynamics change or are reified at different points during the process.

The paper argues that this legal geographical methodology lends itself to unique analysis of transitional justice: by illuminating the relationships and dynamics between space and law (and non-law) within transitional justice processes, we may uncover factors previously unseen in these relationships. We can thus understand how and why transitional justice processes are constituted and gain deeper insight into the factors that affect their outcomes. This, in turn, presents future opportunities to bring together the theoretical with the lived reality of transitional justice: for example, analysis of the relationships between transitional justice models and the actors participating in these processes.