This collection of essays by an international group of authors explores the ways in which law and legal institutions are used in countries coming to terms with traumatic pasts and, in some cases, traumatic presents. In putting to question what is often taken for granted in uncritical calls for reconciliation, it critically analyses and frequently challenges the political and legal assumptions underlying discourses of reconciliation. Drawing on a broad spectrum of disciplinary and interdisciplinary insights the authors examine how competing conceptions of law, time, and politics are deployed in social transformations and how pressing demands for reconstruction, reconciliation, and justice inform and respond to legal categories and their use of time. The book is genuinely interdisciplinary, drawing on work in politics, philosophy, theology, sociology and law. It will appeal to a wide audience of researchers and academics working in these areas.
Biography
Dr Scott Veitch is Reader in Law at the University of Glasgow, UK.
'...asks a number of intellectually interesting questions and, in addressing them, raises intriguing questions for further research.' Law and Politics Review '...an outstanding book, indispensable to anyone concerned with its themes...this is a work that, in depth as well as in breadth, will repay with considerable interest the time spent reading it.' Social and Legal Studies
