Mara Revkin: “Evidence-Based Transitional Justice”

Northeastern Law’s Center for Global Law and Justice 2025 Speaker Series, Issues in Human Rights and Humanitarian Law

Featuring:
Mara Revkin
Associate Professor of Law and Political Science, Duke University

This talk builds on Professor Revkin’s recent Yale Law Journal article, “Evidence-Based Transitional Justice,” coauthored with Ala Profs. Ala Alrababah (Bocconi University) and Rachel Myrick (Duke University). The authors use evidence from a systematic literature review of more than 300 empirical studies of public attitudes toward transitions justice and their own original data from household surveys in Iraq and Ukraine to identify several urgent problems and knowledge gaps in the field. A key finding is that some of the most well-known transitional justice mechanisms, including those employed in South Africa, Rwanda, and Cambodia, failed to achieve their objectives of peacebuilding and reconciliation. The talk calls for greater attention to the experiences and attitudes of affected populations in the design of transitional justice processes and previews findings from the author’s ongoing research in Iraq, South Sudan, and Ukraine.

Respondent:
Risa Kitagawa Amano
Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, Northeastern University

Questions? 
Please contact Professor Zinaida Miller at [email protected].

The lecture series is open to the Northeastern University community and the general public.