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Submission deadline: February 15, 2020

Introduction:

The Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv University is organizing an international conference on the relationship between transitional justice and the current crisis of democracy. The conference will take place on June 29-30, 2020, in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv. This call for papers invites proposals for presentation of a paper at the conference. Authors of selected proposals may be offered full or partial flight and accommodation expenses. Submission deadline: February 15, 2020

Background:

The field of transitional justice, as it has developed since the late 1980s, has largely been based on particular understandings of the relationship between democracy, the rule of law, accountability and truth, according to which law was to simultaneously serve functions of justice, truth-telling and establishing solid democratic foundations. These perceptions of the role of law in transition from authoritarian regimes to democracy have been translated into various institutional innovations and legal reforms such as truth commissions, public apologies, hybrid courts, international and universal criminal jurisdiction, reparations and restitution. In a seeming reversal of the movement of transitions to democracy, in recent years we are witnessing a worldwide phenomenon of democratic decline in both new and established democracies, in which the transition away from democracy is facilitated by legal tools and the rejection of the authority of science and objective facts. This crisis has brought about a stream of theoretical explanations captured by labels such as “populism”, “abusive constitutionalism”, “constitutional backsliding”, “authoritarian legalism”, “post-truth age”, “backlash”, etc.