James A. Sweeney

Restorative justice and transitional justice at the ECHR

The entire jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights contains just one reference to ‘restorative justice’, in the 2010 case of Đokic v. Bosnia and Herzegovina. The case concerned housing restitution after the conflict in former Yugoslavia and the reference to restorative justice was a quotation from the UN’s ‘Pinheiro Principles’. In its admissibility decision on 31 May 2011 in the case of Sfountouris and Others v. Germany, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed that the Convention imposes upon Contracting States no specific obligation to redress injustice or damage caused by their predecessor. Likewise, the Convention imposes no duty upon states to restore property which was transferred to them before they ratified the Convention (Kopecky v. Slovakia), or even to establish legal procedures in which restitution of property may be sought (Beshiri v. Albania). Yet restorative justice has real potential in transitional contexts, and means far more than property restitution. This article seeks definitional clarity and tracks the relationship between restorative justice and transitional justice in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, encompassing not only property restitution cases but also cases on successor trials, amnesties, truth and memorialisation, and lustration. The analysis draws upon recent scholarship on the sometimes antagonistic relationship between successor regimes’ transitional justice policies and their human rights obligations.

Non-retroactivity, candour and ‘transitional relativism’ : a response to the ECtHR judgment in Maktouf and Damjanović v. Bosnia and Herzegovina

This contribution makes a close analysis of the recent ECHR judgment in Maktouf and Damjanovic v. Bosnia and Herzegovina, which resulted in the release from prison of perpetrators of genocide at Srebrenica. The article examines ECHR cases on non-retroactivity, and traces their development in transitional cases back to the ‘Berlin Wall cases’. Two main arguments are made: first it was not necessary to release the applicants in the Maktouf case, even though they won in Strasbourg, be- cause they only challenged their sentence rather than their guilt; and second, that the case can be situated in a complex transitional milieu where states, like Bosnia & Herzegovina, may ask for – but only occasionally receive – a form of ‘transitional relativism’.

Book Review: Catholic Social Justice: Theological and Practical ExplorationsCatholic Social Justice: Theological and practical explorations, ed. CullenPhilomena, HooseBernard and MannionGerard (TT £18.99 pbk

Anglican Church, the Centre does luminously well in all of this. Throughout his survey, Bliss writes thoughtfully and carefully, and he shows some tenacity in attaching the quiet details of his subject to a far broader, more voluble picture. If the cumulative effect fractures, it is enough that many of its themes and occasions come to life sufficiently well to send the reader off in search of more details elsewhere. Financial decline may well militate strongly against the maintenance of such a venture as the Anglican Centre in Rome. It might all too easily simply become a beautiful home to a good deal of avuncular hobnobbing between picturesque ecclesiastical dignitaries. This would be a little tragedy, but an authentic one, for if Anglicans and Catholics are to come to know each other generously and creatively, it will also be through the enterprises of their laity, their scholars, artists and thinkers. If Bliss’s handy book offers anything by way of a provocation it is surely that we should all be thinking about this and giving the Centre the intellectual, moral and material support that it needs in order to flourish on behalf of us all.