For the Balkinization Symposium on Ruti G. Teitel, Presidential Visions of Transitional Justice: An American Legacy of Responsibility and Reconciliation (Oxford University Press, 2025).
Ruti Teitel
Professors Grey, Hay and Murphy engage in the Balkinization Symposium on my book Presidential Visions of Transitional Justice: An American Legacy of Responsibility and Reconciliation (OUP 2025).
My book looks at transitional justice as political
leadership and as a form of diplomacy. My aim is to rebalance what has been a
recent emphasis on legalism and bureaucratization in the theory and practice of
transitional justice. Second, if we think of how American scholars look at
transitional justice generally, it is transitional justice for thee not me;
what America can contribute to transitions elsewhere, rather than how we reckon
with our own past. (Contrast scholars such as Neil Kritz[1];Natalie Davidson,[2])
I was originally inspired by President
Barack Obama’s second term and his then revisiting of America’s Cold War
legacy, especially in Asia and Latin America. Also, following on from Obama, the
emergence of the Black Lives Matter and the reparations movement in the US underscored
the need to revisit the transition from slavery post-civil war in the
contemporary context of George Floyd.
An enlarging American global footprint
through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is the context for chapters in
the book indeed, for example the administration and foreign policy established
by Teddy Roosevelt. As David Grey observes[3] that there is often a
layered dimension to American presidential diplomacy in this area: to be sure
it is always promoting American interests—while, on the other there have been
transformative moments in the promotion of different dimensions for
international law—again always also overlapping with US interests. Thus, he notes the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt was one
of the most gnarly chapters in US history : that on the one hand we see period
of empire and acquisition while at same time we also see along with US taking
control and displacing older empires, while developing a concept of international
law designed to serve perceived US interests.
He rightly asks: “Did Roosevelt’s
hubris set the stage for a century of American adventurism that led to
precisely the actions for which Obama later feel compelled to apologize?” I
would answer with an emphatic “yes.” : The book tells a story of continuity of
the state and its responsibility for past wrongs- and also the continuity of
the Presidency—as the actor who ought to take responsibility for his predecessor
(fellow Commander in Chief). across administrations and over US history. Indeed it is plain that there is today an
ongoing force of Rooseveltian hubris evident in Trump’s foreign policy ventures
–but he was also greatly admired by number of successors in the office—and is
widely seen as the author of the President of action.
What does Saying Sorry really mean?
Moving into the more contemporary
period David observes “Clinton’s apology [for not halting the genocide in
Rwanda] embraces American exceptionalism and calls for something
different.” In this regard his actions
reflect the leadership characteristic of the Presidents taken up in my
book. What would emerge are a number of
innovations as a matter of international law; first the ad hoc tribunals of
judgment at the time, yet given their limitations, in terms of deterrence of
atrocities at the time, e.g. Srebrenica; the further innovation would be the
development in international law of the” Responsibility to Protect,” a new doctrine that notwithstanding UN
Charter prohibitions could lay the basis for humanitarian intervention where
atrocities occur. Yet, implementing such
duties in the face of humanitarian threat has been difficult. Indeed, Libya where the UN did actually
authorize intervention appears to have backfired and seen in retrospect as morphing
into regime change and unstable and volatile one at that. Yet as Gaza and Congo recently remind us
equally or perhaps even more problematic are the moral failures of non --intervention.
As we can see, these tensions are
present in international law and politics today making the question of
leadership and decision making all the more critical.
Is Presidential Visions offering a
normative account?
Bradley Hays seems persuaded that the
book shows the role of presidential leadership in efforts to deal with moral
and political standing after conflict—and related issues of
constitutionalism. Yet the goes on to
raise the pressing question regarding the direction of narrative in my book
light of current politics. To what
extent is there a break? “Hays
writes, “The book’s central claim regarding the presidential role in
transitional justice—that presidential involvement in transitional justice is
part of a repertoire of constitutional and political authorities—takes on
particular resonance when viewed against the recent rejection of such politics
by the Trump administration (2-3).”
Or put another way, Hays questions how in
light of the efforts of a President like Obama, how to understand the
opposition in the current administration to notions of repair for slavery and
segregation --- even opposition to history and memorialization? I.e., what kind of story –to what extent is
there a tradition in the book’s accounting
and now a disrupture? As he
puts it in light of what we are seeing now, “The stark partisan backlash
against the practices raises difficult questions.”
Colleen Murphy poses a related
question about whether some kind of historical directionality is evident in the
narrative set out in the book. Surely, when we put side by side Presidents
Obama and Trump, it cannot be one of linear historical progress, but something
perhaps more cyclical.
To what extent does Presidential
Visions help us better understand contemporary US Politics?
Colleen and Bradley ask whether and how the book helps us
understand American politics . I am inclined to agree here with Colleen’s observation that : “Scholarship on
transitional justice offers resources for more systematic understanding of the
purposes.” Accordingly one might
conclude that the discourse that can
help us understand the purposes and the context of this debate and that there
is an ongoing contestation about American identity.
Let us consider where the historical
narrative can illuminate current politics.
Again reconsidering Hay and Murphy’s inquiry-- discussed above— Is Trump
in or out of the book’s account?
We might consider to what extent the Trumpian
practices emulating Roosevelt vis a vis the US role in the Americas. The story
of transitional justice in my book could help us see where these actions lie in
terms of US actions in of leadership in the Western Hemisphere. If we look
closely, we would see that in some ways
the contemporary actions follow those of TR—ie in the President Teddy
Roosevelt’s muscular use of force to push non US empire out of the continent,
or the violent creation of the Panama Canal and how it enabled expansion of US
trade to the world. They appear analogous
to the current moment—yet with notable differences that are best encapsulated in the vocabulary
introduced here. Thus Trump‘s recent
actions[4]
vis a vis Venezuela[5]
have been utterly lacking in the rule of
law associated with at least some of the Roosevelt administration practices,
where he explicitly rejected the “gunboat diplomacy” of the European colonialists—indeed rejected
these as unjust wars——in fact Roosevelt’s involvement was crucial to the
concerted move away from then
international law’s support for states of military enforcement of
contract breaches and the pivoting instead to alternative forms of conflict
resolution such as arbitration of which he was an enthusiastic champion
---indeed—the subject of his Nobel Peace Prize address.
Another illustration of the extent to
which the diplomatic history here may help us understand the backlash
associated with the Trump presidency / and the Maga movement against the agenda
of diversity and equity and putting in question any possibility of federal
reparations. Here, the perspective laid
out in Presidential Visions may well be helpful to offering context and
re -situating the conflict : we might understand the attacks on Obama’s statements
as evidence of contestation going back to the Post Civil War and
Reconstruction---as taken up in chapter three of my book underscoring the
extent to which the problematique of transitional justice is buried in our
history but also that the story has been
one of forced reconciliation/ Union, and failure over many decades to
meaningfully grapple with issues of repair and transformation.
What we experience today is the
detritus of the grief and grievance, which reflects the failure of
reconstruction and post Civil War transitional justice. What will it take for us to move on? Knowing
more about our history and in particular about the potential of political
leadership regarding transitional justice can help us understand our fault lines
in need of reckoning. The historical
episodes taken up in my book remind us that even centuries later it is not too
late and that leaders can make significant change with their acknowledgments
and other decisive actions.
Ruti
Teitel is the Ernst C Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, NY Law School. You can
reach her by e-mail at teitelruti@aol.com.
[1] Neil J. Kritz
(ed.), Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former
Regimes (Vols. I–III, Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press
1995).
[2] Davidson, Natalie
R. American Transitional Justice: Writing Cold War History in Human
Rights Litigation. of Human Rights in History. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2020. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/american-transitional-justice/E6E33ED1360094826D5527E2602AE2A1
[4] Associated Press, WATCH:
'We want it back': Trump demands Venezuela return 'land, oil rights' to U.S.,
PBS News (Dec. 17, 2025). Speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews, Trump
said: "They took it away because we had a president that maybe wasn't
watching. But they're not going to do that again." "We want it
back," he added. "They took our oil rights — we had a lot of oil
there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back."
[5] Donald J. Trump, Truth
Social, Jan. 06, 2026: “I am pleased to announce that the Interim
Authorities in Venezuela will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels
of High Quality, Sanctioned Oil, to the United States of America. This Oil will
be sold at its Market Price, and that money will be controlled by me, as
President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the
people of Venezuela and the United States! I have asked Energy Secretary Chris
Wright to execute this plan, immediately. It will be taken by storage ships,
and brought directly to unloading docks in the United States. Thank you for
your attention to this matter!” https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115850817778602689