Claudia Kuretsidis-Haider and Winfried R. Garscha, eds., Gerechtigkeit nach Diktatur und Krieg: Transitional Justice 1945 bis heute: Strafverfahren und ihre Quellen

1The term “transitional justice” represents a rather loose concept that has entered our vocabularies over the past two decades or so. It denotes efforts by national societies that have experienced gross abuses of human rights in the context of war and/or dictatorship to foster internal harmony and democracy and, perhaps most importantly, to do justice to both victims and oppressors following the termination of conditions that had given rise to profound injustices. These objectives, of course, are not always easy to reconcile with one another. The focus of this volume is on one of the vehicles of transitional justice—the trial and punishment of those accused of violations of human rights.

2Although the subtitle might lead the reader to expect a broad survey of such investigations and prosecutions during the period following World War II, and there have been many, the actual contents of the book are quite limited. The volume contains papers originally presented at a conference hel