Something has gone weird with the formatting. Bear with me.

Today has been spent preparing for my crimes against humanity class. I have been cogitating about the class and the revisions I want to make to it this time. I notice this is the 8^th iteration. I haven’t made many changes to it over the years really, but this time I want to do a different assignment, the blogs, and I also want to intensify and sharpen our study of transitional justice.

Transitional justice, according to the International Center for Transitional Justice, is “a response to widespread or systematic violations of human rights” (http://www.ictj.org/en/tj/ retrieved today). While I am familiar with the definitions of crimes against humanity from the Rome Statute setting up the International Criminal Court, and with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, my previous experiences in this class, and more recently in discussions in the Human Rights and Crime Control class that I also teach, have revealed that we are far from universal norms on either subject. International Law is claimed as normative, and these documents also make these claims. We act as if they are normative and incontrovertible. But I have become interested in learning more about the thinking of those who deny them. Because it is in those communities that these crimes against humanity occur.

Transitional justice is comprised of a multitude of actions taken by a plethora of stakeholders and players. To that extent, having a topic “Transitional Justice” is perhaps limiting our imagination of what might be involved. In the past I have organized my class into three principle topics: Hate and Crimes against Humanity; The Problem of Atrocity; and Seeking Justice and Building Peace in the Aftermath. This class is the third of a triune in which I specifically seek to promote non-violent responses to atrocious violence. Consequently, perhaps, I have not looked at the whole of transitional justice strategy, focusing more on the more restorative initiatives.

Reviewing the activities and discussion queries I have designed, I see no reason to change them so much as to think about how I want to participate and guide those discussions in a different way which is more critical of all approaches.

One of the advantages of my lectureless teaching style is that I have more time to study myself. Today I subscribed to the Journal of Transitional Justice Studies. I am looking forward to the first issue arriving. Also there seem to have been an explosion of books on the subject in the criminal justice publishing field with the result that I have several unbroken spines on my bookshelves after my recent trip to the Academy of Criminal Justice conference in Boston.

Working in two offices has its distinct disadvantages…they are on the OTHER shelves. But here I have my trusty steeds: Samantha Power’s A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Larry May’s brilliant Crimes Against Humanity, and Geoffrey Robertson’s more polemical and passionate book by the same name which peoples the drier more abstract discussion of May’s philosophy of international law.In addition, I have been pawing through the tables of contents of a couple of  new books. The first is edited by Alette Smeulers and Roelof Haveman: Supranational Criminology: Towards a Criminology of International Crimes. Several of these chapters look fascinating and now I want to go and curl up by the fire and read. A second book, written by Mark Findlay and Ralph Henham is called Transforming International Criminal Justice: Retributive and Restorative Justice in the Trial Process. This book deconstructs trials and asks if new formats might not serve transitional justice better. Already I am intrigued. It’s a big book and hardcovered which for some reason I find more intimidating, but the idea that something I have held to be true will be taken to pieces and examined is more than intriguing.

I actually really enjoy this class. Mainly because I am so amazed by the resilience of people despite unimaginable suffering. While the horrors they suffer become more difficult to bear I think particularly as my own changes through parenting become more apparent to me and my own aging makes me appreciate the unique value of each individual life more, the way people are somehow able to rally themselves and reach out to each other to foster healing and growth is truly astounding. Learning more about these examples fills me with hope and gratitude.

I have been disciplining myself not to title my blog post before I write today, after seeing that I was ending up writing about something quite else than I had started with. This post is no exception. Thinking I was going to write about teaching transitional justice, I have ended up writing about learning about it. But perhaps that is always the paradox: teaching and learning are two sides of the same coin and the coin is constantly spinning between parties to educational encounters. I am feeling that wonderful sense of excitement as the dawn of the new quarter pinks the eastern sky.

I teach a restorative justice class. In the early days of class I ask students to talk about an experience of victimization. Sadly, every student has little difficulty coming up with a story. Sometimes the stories are of fairly minor offences, graffiti on an apartment building one is manager of for example. Others are much more serious: the loss of treasures from inside a car which is burgled, or even sexual abuse. I ask students to tell us what happened as a result of the offence and whether the response met their needs. Do they have outstanding needs now? In almost every case, whether the criminal justice system was involved or not, my students still experience feelings of guilt, loss, or grievance. Sometimes not just because of the offence, but these feelings may be compounded by the way the authorities responded.

This has led me to believe that the crime continues to unfold in the mind of the student. They continue to have questions that are not answered, feelings that are unresolved.

In Howard Zehr’s book Changing Lenses which I was reading at the gas station today while the attendant filled my car (he was too busy to talk as we usually do), he speaks of the focus our criminal justice system puts on guilt and punishment. He suggests that we think of justice as a redressing of a wonky balance caused by the crime. Instead, he recommends that we focus on harm.

Going back to my student victims, it appears that our listening and empathizing and showing sympathy is helpful. Here we are focused on the harm and the victim. We are giving our attention and validating the hurt feelings. This makes me think that justice is also unfolding and is not as much about redressing balance as it is about rebuilding trust. Sometimes the offender can help with that. But always we community members stepping forward makes a huge difference. What I see in my students is that the comfort restores their sense of what is right and they are able to let go of some of their bitterness and resentment sometimes.

I keep wondering what would happen to the death penalty if we really showed up for victims’ family members. While some seem quickly to relinquish hate and vengeance. Others get so stuck. Could we love them and comfort them to wholeness such that dealing in pain was no longer necessary for them?