1. As quoted by Boraine, Alex, A Country Unmasked: Inside South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission 283 (Oxford U. Press 2000)Google Scholar.

2. A character in Touched By an Angel, (PAX Television 05 19, 2000)Google Scholar (TV series).

3. Mitchell, David, Ghostwritten: A Novel 318 (Random House 1999)Google Scholar.

4. As quoted by Rosenberg, Tina, Afterword: Confronting the Painful Past in Meredith, Martin, Coming to Terms: South Africa's Search for Truth 339 (Public Affairs 1999)Google Scholar. Bohley was one of the most important of the pre-1990 East German dissidents.

5. In testimony to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Her son Christopher Piet, one of the “Gugulethu Seven,” was shot in March 1996 by the South African Police. Quoted from vol. 5, TRC Report, chap. 9, paragraph 33 by Villa-Vicencio, Charles, The Reek of Cruelty and the Question for Healing? Where Retributive and Restorative Justice Meet 14 J. L. Relig. 184–185Google Scholar.

6. Id. at 186.

7. The Battle of Kosovo took place on June 28, 1389. The political surge towards the Bosnian War owed much to the speech which Slobodan Milosovic delivered at the site of the battlefield on the anniversary in 1989. Paul Mojzes has characterized the Bosnian War as “a ‘religious’ war led by irreligious people.”

8. The most astute description of a “multi-valued choice” can be found in the work of the British lawyer who coined the term out of his experience as a civil service administrator. Cf. Vickers, Geoffrey, Value Systems and Social Process (Basic Books, Inc., Publishers 1968)Google Scholar. Many of the standards we actually implement in social decisions, says Vickers, “are usually latent in the mind, ready to arise whenever some concrete situation evokes them.” Id. at 113. Vickers walks a line between deontology and teleology and combines them both. “[P]olicy-making as the regulation of relations stresses that the standards by which these relations are judged are not goals to be attained once for all but, like the mariner's course, must constantly be sought anew. I will call them norms.” Id. at 116. This theory is critically important for asserting the modesty that ought to be accorded the judgements of law courts as well as those of truth commissions. And it is a challenge to the idolatry of “the whole truth.” As Vickers says, “only when the ‘right’ information about what is happening is compared with the ‘right’ standard about what ought to be happening is the signal generated, which moves the selector to choose the ‘right’ response.” Id. at 118. This approach to ethics and policy requires constant conscious learning of “what is, what to want, and how to do.” Id. at 117-121. One might call it principle-laden pragmatism. Cf. also the discussion under “III. Three Key Issues for Christian Social Ethics” infra at 122-125.

9. These distinctions are from Boraine, supra n. 1, at 288-291 (Oxford U. Press 2000). Here and often in the rest of this essay, I owe much to this new book and to conversations with its author.

10. Bass's, Gary Jonathan book, Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes (Princeton U. Press 2000)Google Scholar too new to have been read in preparation for this essay, is reviewed in 79, no. 6 Foreign Affairs 173 (Nov.-Dec. 2000). Reviewer G. John Bcenberry calls it “[t]he best work yet on the politics of justice after war.” Id. Bass argues that if the liberal democracies had merely wanted to carry out victor's justice without resort to definitions of war crimes and crimes against humanity that they hoped, at least, to achieve international recognition, they could easily have court martialed the Nazi leaders without implementing Western notions of a fair trial. Elazar Barkan, surveying a dozen contemporary cases of formal negotiations over restitution-claims, believes that agreement on the criminal nature of certain atrocities is a major, pervasive trend in international affairs, not to be dismissed by old-style theories of realpolitik. Cf. Barkan, Elazar, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (W.W. Norton & Co. 2000)Google Scholar, especially the summary chapter 308-349.

11. Cf. Barkan, Elazar, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (W.W. Norton 2000)Google Scholar and Glover, Jonathan, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (Yale U. Press 2000)Google Scholar.

12. This is Mark Osiel's term for the sort of crimes of central concern here. Murders by individuals and deaths in public riots are not usually to be blamed on governmental planning. Not so the atrocities in Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda. There was nothing random about these events. Cf. Osiel, , Ever Again: Legal Remembrance and Administrative Massacre, 144 U. Pa. L. Rev. 463–704 (1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. For an example of a contrary claim, cf. Elster, Jon, On Doing What One Can: An Argument Against Post-Communist Restitution and Retribution as condensed in Transitional Justice:How Emerging Democracies Reckon With Former Regimes vol. I, 566–568 (Kritz, Neil J. ed., U.S. Instit. of Peace 1995)Google Scholar. It might be just, says Elster, to prosecute leaders who broke law in force in their own regime, but there are too many degrees of guilt, innocence, suffering and benefit across the citizen-spectrum to make room for just reparation or just prosecution.

14. Cf. Jacoby, Susan, Wild Justice: The Evolution of Revenge (Harper & Row Publishers 1983)Google Scholar.

15. Osiel, supra n. 11, at 619.

16. Rosenberg, supra n. 4, at 350.

17. Boraine, supra n. 1, at 198, 208 & 212-213.

18. The Nazis, however, with German bureaucratic thoroughness, did leave those trails, for example in the minutes written by Adolph Eichman for the Wannsee Holocaust-planning conference of January 21, 1942.

19. The special U.N.-authorized tribunal for war crimes in the Bosnian war had a budget in 1999 of $94,000,000. The defense budget for the South African trial of Eugene de Kock (commander of the notorious Vlakplaas counterinsurgency camp) cost $1,000,000. Cf. Rosenberg, supra n. 4, at 352 & 370.

20. I owe many items in this list to the reflections of Alex Boraine, Deputy Chair of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Cf. Boraine, supra n. 1, ch. 8, Amnesty in Exchange for Truth, the South African Model, 258-298.

21. A notorious illustration was the “not guilty” verdict on former defense minister Magnus Malan by a South African court in 1996. He had decided not to apply to the TRC under its “amnesty for truth” principle but to trust the courts and their judges appointed in the apartheid era. He won the bet. Now he can only be prosecuted again if new judges agree to violate law against double jeopardy.

22. Hayner, Priscilla B., Fifteen Truth Commissions—1974-1994: A Comparative Study 16 Human Rights Q. 625. Cf. 632-634 (1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This valuable survey is now expanded in her just published book, Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity (Routledge 2001)Google Scholar, which was unavailable for this paper.

23. Boraine, op. cit., supra n. 1, at 314-318.

24. Krog, Antjie, Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa 151–152 (1998, Three Rivers Press 2000)Google Scholar.

25. One poignant example from Justice Richard J. Goldstone: Said Mrs. Gcina about her appearance before the TRC: “You know, Judge, last night was the first night since I lost my husband that I have slept through and not been awakened by nightmares.” How did she explain it? “There were so many important people here who were interested in hearing my story.” Commented Goldstone: “Any doubts I had about the healing effect of the public acknowledgment of the suffering of victims were resolved at that moment.” Goldstone, Richard J., For Humanity: Reflections of a War Crimes Investigator 65 (Yale U. Press 2000)Google Scholar.

26. Krog, supra n. 24, at 311.

27. An illustration now widely quoted is the testimony of Lucas Baba Sikwepere, blinded by police brutality: “But I feel what has been making me sick all the time is the fact that I couldn't tell my story. But now I—it feels like I got my sight back by coming here and telling you the story.” Id. at 43. But the evidence of healing-through-storytelling is mixed. Some victims reexperience their suffering in the telling, and some stories can fuel renewed public rage as well as public compassion. See below on the problem of amnesty and justice.

28. Boraine, supra n. 1, at 290-291.

29. Cited by Dumisa B. Ntsebneza, The Uses of Truth Commissions: Lessons for the World, in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions 161 (Robert I. Rotberg & Dennis Thompson eds., Princeton U. Press 2000). Ntsebneza is a longtime human rights lawyer who headed the TRC Investigative Unit.

30. Mahoney, John, The Making of Moral Theology: A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition 34 (The Clarendon Press 1987)Google Scholar. Cf. also my discussion of the Protestant version of this individualism in, An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics 55–57 (Oxford U. Press 1995)Google Scholar.

31. Id.

32. Osiel, supra n. 12, at 491, 498, 619, 623, 667 & 681, inter alia.

33. Krog, supra n. 24, at 344. This discussion circled around the famous tension between a “culture of guilt”, which warrants individual responsibility, and a “culture of shame” which mandates loyalty to one's group. Desmond Tutu, says Krog, managed to bridge the two in his understanding of ubuntu. Cf. id. at 143. The idea of individual responsibility and agency is one way to retain the attribution of humanity to perpetrators as well as victims.

34. Sandra Day O'Connor, Foreword to Goldstone, supra n. 25, at. xv.

35. Villa-Vicencio, supra n. 5, at 115.

36. Cf. McPherson, James M., Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era 849 (Ballantine Books 1989)Google Scholar.

37. Cf. Prunier, Gerard, The Rwanda Crisis: History of Genocide 365 (Columbia U. Press 1997)Google Scholar. Political imprisonments has reached this total by late 1996.

38. That dignity and worth is further restored when, as in a growing number of criminal trials in the United States, the perpetrator is required to render forms of “community service” that include feasible practical services to the victim.

39. Kent Greenawalt, Amnesty's Justice in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions 201 (Robert I. Rothberg & Dennis Thompson, eds., Princeton U. Press 2000).

40. Notably enough, during the two years of the TRC, virtually no acts of revenge were recorded in South Africa. Boraine, supra n. 1, at 293. Priscilla Hayner, in her survey of 15 truth commissions worldwide, comments that prosecutions are very rare after a truth commission report” for “the decision whether to prosecute is generally a political one.” Cf. Hayner, supra n. 22, at 604-605. One might conclude that the truth about the perpetrators' crimes is the minimum requirement of public acceptance of personal amnesties when the latter is perceived as being morally different from blanket amnesty and impunity.

41. Supra n. 24, at 170.

42. Elizabeth Kiss, Moral Ambition Within and Beyond Political Constraints: Reflections on Restorative Justice in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions 70 (Robert I. Rothberg & Dennis Thompson, eds., Princeton U. Press 2000).

43. Jesus did warn his disciples against letting their conflicts proceed to settlement in courts of law. (Matt 5:25), and Paul thought it a disgrace to the church that its members would take refuge in the secular courts. This is perennial wisdom: For mending broken human relations, forms of restorative justice are more likely to emerge from out-of-court settlements

44. Charles Villa-Vicencio & Wilhelm Verwoerd, Constructing a Report: Writing Up the “Truth”, in Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions 291 (Robert I. Rothberg & Dennis Thompson, eds., Princeton U. Press 2000). Vervoerd is the son of the prime minister, major architect of apartheid, assassinated in the early 1960s. Boraine makes a similar confession. Cf. Boraine, supra n. 1, at 165, 185 & 187.

45. Kiss, supra n. 42, at 90. Her quote is from Krog, supra n. 24, at 364.

46. Boraine, supra n. 1, at 185-186.

47. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, What is Meant by a Telling the Truth? in Ethics 326–334 (Bethge, Eberhard trans., SCM Press 1955)Google Scholar.

48. Greenawalt, supra n. 39, at 189-210.

49. Id. at 192-197.

50. That was how a director of the Stasi Museum in Berlin recently described to me his the growth of mistrust in the DDR in its latter years.

51. Ash, Timothy Garton, The File: A Personal History 225–226 (Random House 1997)Google Scholar.

52. Boraine,supra n. 1, at 291.

53. As quoted from Either/Or: A Kierkekaard Anthology 28 (Bretall, Robert ed., Princeton U. Press 1938, 1946)Google Scholar.

54. Interview with Bill Moyers, November 27, 1991, in a program entitled “Facing Hate with Elie Wiesel and Bill Movers.” Cf. my An Ethic for Enemies, supra n. 30, at 69-70.

55. Personal conversation, April 1999, in Berlin.

56. Hayner, supra n. 22, at 610.

57. Such reeducation has proven too difficult for some public school teachers in the former German Democratic Republic, which trained teachers in perspectives on history and methods of teaching it that contrast radically with that in the West German educational system.

58. In the old apartheid days, only white people could visit the inside of this famous monument to Boer courage and Boer racial imperialism. Now the officer who permits entry is black, and the most encouraging thought about black visitors now is that the murals of this history, spread around the outside and insides of this “shrine,” will educate them to some empathy with the Boer view of history and some inspiration of new counter-narratives and new monuments in South Africa that put on public display the sufferings of the victims of apartheid.

59. Cf. Hayner, supra n. 22, at 622-623. In retrospect, says Alex Boraine, the TRC should at least have had the power to order amnestied perpetrators to make personal reparations to their victims within the limits of their personal and other resources. (Personal communication.) Cf. Boraine, supra n. 1, at 333-336. Seeing them walk away from prison, unencumbered by any obligations to victims, left a new sense of justice-denied in the wake of amnesty. Most advocates of restorative justice in the context of criminal convictions make the same claim.

60. The latter films were not commercial successes, and one of my African American colleagues commented sadly that he sees this as evidence that white audiences find these films too painful to watch. Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved (Alfred A. Knopf 1987), remains as the most powerful evocation of the reality of slavery of any literary work to come from America.

61. Patterson, Orlando, Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries (Civitas/CounterPoint 1998)Google Scholar.