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Aug 24, 2020 · It argues that international law needs a fresh relational understanding in order to engage critically with its own foundations and decolonize its own structures. It first addresses the dual role of international law as culprit and remedy and false dichotomies in discourses on reparatory justice.
- Carsten Stahn
- 2020
Aug 14, 2018 · How is redress for colonial injustice related to contemporary global justice? Under what conditions might agents be reconciled to the institutions that enabled or produced colonial injustices, and which still may constitute so many of the options and limits of their lives?
- Catherine Lu
- 2018
- Introduction
- Contemporary Ambiguities
- Beyond Colonial Amnesia: Towards Greater Intertemporality
- Beyond Servitude: Revisiting Legal Personality
- Beyond Objects: Colonial Cultural Heritage as Access to History
- Conclusions
The colonial era is over. But many of the problems and effects that it created, such as structural inequality, exploitation or trauma, remain unaddressed. In the field of transitional justice, legal frameworks are often used to challenge contemporary policies that impede accountability and collective remembrance of atrocities. Trials, truth commiss...
Contemporary international law is marked by a paradox. Colonialism is a form of structural injustice which entailed different forms of injustice, such as deprivation of rights (land-taking, killings and physical abuse, looting of cultural objects), exploitation, unjust enrichment or systemic or structural wrongs, including identity-taking, racial d...
A first key macro issue is the approach towards intertemporality. The passage of time is a significant obstacle to redress for colonial injustice. The application of the standards and constructs of the time may lead to a perpetuation of injustices. It affects the qualification of wrongs, chains of causation, issues of attribution, means of proof an...
A second fundamental condition for a more responsible engagement with colonial injustice is a differentiated understanding of legal personality. Many of the foundations of positivist legal doctrine are grounded in Eurocentric views of legal personality, which excluded alternative readings of societal organization or legal representation. In 19th ce...
The need to revisit legal concepts extends beyond the treatment of time and legal subjects. The treatment of cultural colonial objects is a third crucial area which requires rethinking some of the fundamental premises of international law, such as the legalities of provenance, conflicts between heritage and property, and the conception of objects16...
International law requires new methods of engaging with the afterlife and effects of colonial injustice. The past cannot be simply swept aside through legal formalism, or reference to the historical nature of violations (‘let bygones be bygones’). The framework on which international law has been built — with its strong focus on Westphalian soverei...
While the German government appears ready to atone for its role in colonial injustices, such readiness comes with questionable caveats. On the other side, the Namibian government has adopted a rather patronizing and know-it-all approach to the reparations debacle.
Nov 25, 2019 · This article analyzes and criticizes the temporal orientation of Catherine Lu’s theory of colonial redress in Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics. Lu argues that colonial historic injustice can, with few exceptions, justify special reparative measures only if these past injustices still contribute to structural injustice in ...
- Timothy Waligore
- 2018
With repartition as its prevalent feature, and considering the sparsity of underlying, common legal principles, colonial legal practice did not condense into what may be referred to as ‘international colonial law’. Yet, colonization gradually shifted the focus of international law away from Europe.
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Dec 1, 2023 · It’s difficult for a country, particularly a poor developing nation, to take a former colonizer, usually a much richer country, to the International Court of Justice to ask for redress for...