In the United States, new efforts to address state-backed racial violence and discrimination tap into a long global history of transitional justice. Case studies in Brazil, South Africa, and Northern Ireland shed light on which types of transitional justice programs are likely to be most effective in the United States.
Accountability Is the Cure for an Ailing Democracy
The United States should follow the examples of other nations that were brave enough to make their despotic leaders face justice.
Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
In the early 2000s, Peruvians faced a difficult choice.
Their outgoing president, Alberto Fujimori, had been democratically elected as a
populist only to preside over a regime of corruption, repression, and personal
megalomania. Early in his first term, he orchestrated an
autogolpe, or
self-coup, in which he shut down congress and took over the judiciary with the
assistance of the military and Peruvian elites.
Though Fujimori nominally restored democratic institutions