In the transitional justice literature, “mainstream liberal” conceptions are the background against which critical, feminist, agonistic, intersectional, and other innovative approaches are pinned. Empirical analysis often shows how approaches inspired by “liberal” theory fail to meet the needs of disadvantaged groups. The more or less explicit claim is that this is not merely the result of poor implementation but a foreseeable consequence of the liberal framework itself. The key critique is twofold. On the one hand, the liberal attempt at impartiality at best naïvely overlooks relevant differences and at worst hides problematic domination of an established ideology at the cost of those who are in some sense “other”. The idealised liberal anthropology informing “universal” principles of right and wrong often overlooks the particular needs, views, and concerns of marginalised communities. On the other hand, the liberal commitment to individual rights not only overlooks the importance of community but the entire dimension of people’s complex interdependencies altogether. This allows relationships shaped by power imbalances to block these rights from being meaningful for some. These theoretical critiques point to important problems and are familiar within political theory too and some contemporary liberals work on proposals avoiding these problematic side effects of aiming at impartiality and individual rights.
This paper does not aim to provide yet another such proposal, but rather argues that – despite these problems – everyone who cares about transitional justice should be a) committed to some kind of priority for individual rights and b) be concerned with ensuring some kind of impartiality. While avoiding the problems identified both in the practical and in the theoretical literature is extremely challenging, the goal cannot be given up without undermining the very same values underlying the concerns expressed by the critiques themselves.
