Bernadette Atuahene, Property and Transitional Justice, 58 UCLA L. REV. Discourse 65 (2010).
Abstract
Transitional justice is the study of the mechanisms employed by communities, states, and the international community to promote social reconstruction by addressing the legacy of systematic human rights abuses and authoritarianism. The transitional justice literature discussing how states can address past civil and political rights violations through truth commissions and international and domestic prosecutions is well-developed compared to the transitional justice literature concerning the redress of past property rights violations. Nevertheless, history is ripe with examples of states and private actors that have systematically and unjustly taken real property from one group and given it to another. The goal of this Article is to further an important conversation about how transitional states can address these past property rights violations to promote social reconstruction. I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of a state's three main options: (1) maintaining the present property status quo, (2)
fully or partially returning to a prior property status quo, or (3) creating a new property status quo altogether. I argue that a state should decide which option to choose through an inclusive public dialogue in which participants are well-informed rather than through a process involving only elites, which, despite being less time-consuming and less costly, would be inadequate in the long run.
