United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice

In United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics, and Pragmatics, Zachary D. Kaufman explores the U.S. government's support for, or opposition to, certain transitional justice institutions. By first presenting an overview of possible responses to atrocities (such as war crimes tribunals) and then analyzing six historical case studies, Kaufman evaluates why and how the United States has pursued particular transitional justiceoptions since World War II.This book challenges the "legalist" paradigm, which postulates that liberal states pursue war crimes tribunals because their decision-makers hold a principled commitment to the rule of law. Kaufman develops an alternative theory-"prudentialism"-which contends that any state (liberal or illiberal) may support bona fide war crimes tribunals. More generally, prudentialism proposes that states pursue transitional justice options, not out of strict adherence to certain principles, but as a result ofa case-specific balancing of politics, pragmatics, and normative beliefs. Kaufman tests these two competing theories through the U.S. experience in six contexts: Germany and Japan after World War II, the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, the 1990-1991 Iraqi offenses against Kuwaitis, the atrocitiesin the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the 1994 Rwandan genocide.Kaufman demonstrates that political and pragmatic factors featured as or more prominently in U.S. transitional justice policy than did U.S. government officials' normative beliefs. Kaufman thus concludes that, at least for the United States, prudentialism is superior to legalism as an explanatory theory in transitional justice policymaking.

Kaufman presents his cases in a highly systematic manner, with tight overall organization... Kaufman provides much useful insight... In evaluating the prudentialism and legalism models as ways to explain the United States' actions in the four primary cases, [Kaufman's] prudentialism emerges as a clear winner. Kaufman convincingly demonstrates that the United States in each [case] was open to multiple options and motivated by geo-political and other non-legal considerations., Kaufman impressively uses an enormous amount of primary source data, including hundreds of previously classified [U.S. government] documents he obtained and elite interviews he conducted with key decision-makers... Kaufman's prudentialism framework is an essential new tool of analysis for scholars and practitioners of [transitional justice] specifically, and international relations generally, to understand why states support certain options in the aftermath of mass atrocities., Kaufman's book is invaluable for those seeking to understand the legal structure of ICTs and why... This book is unique in the comparisons it affords of ICTs before and after the Cold War., Kaufmans contribution to the academic literature should be perceived as a foundation in the study of both transitional justice and international relations. This book provides a compelling theoretical explanation of why some countries, particularly the United States, decide to, or not to, support particular transitional justice options., In this strikingly original and meticulously researched book, Dr. Zachary Kaufman argues that the United States has led in the creation of some crucial international criminal tribunals for prudential reasons. The book provides essential insights for all interested in preventing mass atrocity, most importantly that war crimes tribunals have been and can be a prudent policy option for the United States.

Previously, Dr. Kaufman taught in Yale University's Department of Political Science and George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, and he held fellowships, lectureships, or research positions at the U.S. Supreme Court, Yale Law School, Harvard Law School, Yale School of Management, Stanford University, and New York University. He also worked at the U.S. Department of Justice and was the first American to serve at the InternationalCriminal Court.Dr. Kaufman is the author of United States Law and Policy on Transitional Justice: Principles, Politics, and Pragmatics (Oxford, 2016), the editor of Social Entrepreneurship in the Age of Atrocities: Changing Our World (2012), the co-editor (with Dr. Phil Clark) of After Genocide: Transitional Justice, Post-conflict Reconstruction, and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond (Oxford, 2009), and the author of dozens of articles and book chapters. A term member of the Council on Foreign Relations anda member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, he holds a D.Phil. (Ph.D.) in International Relations from the University of Oxford (where he was a Marshall Scholar), a J.D. from Yale Law School (where he was an Olin Fellow and Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law & Policy Review), and aB.A. in Political Science from Yale University (where he was the student body president).