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Discusses the pros and cons of using trials and truth commissions to respond to widespread injustice, framing the discussion as a question of repair. Argues that we need to be more careful about making claims that institutional proceedings are healing or cathartic for survivors.

This chapter examines the conceptions of statecraft and international order in the ancient Chinese traditions of Taoism, Buddhism, Legalism, and bingjia, and how these impact the social and political philosophy of modern China as it relates to the rest of the world. It is shown that the Chinese intellectual tradition is suffused with a monist political ideology that conceives of international order in fundamentally hierarchical terms and idealizes interstate order as tending toward universal hegemony or actual empire. Hence, it lacks a meaningful concept of coequal, legitimate sovereignties pursuant to which states may coexist over the long term in nonhierarchical relationships. With the exception of Buddhism, such conceptions of international order may be seen in all the major philosophical currents that are examined. In a country as obsessed as China is with canonical texts and the present-day legitimacy that literary-historical precedent is felt to convey, this legacy of hierarchical assumptions about international order may also provide cause for concern to students of modern-day international relations.

This chapter looks at how anti-militarists attempt to become ‘disobedient’ in the conduct of direct action, with a particular focus on how they constitute themselves as (il)legal subjects. It begins with some reflections on the intimate relationships between concepts of obedience and disobedience, with the rest of the chapter considering how those relationships are manifest in the movement. The first main section outlines how activists attempt to become disobedient, with a focus on the intentional and embodied labour involved in preparing for individual acts of disobedience. The next section reflects on how, despite these disobedient acts, anti-militarists also operate as obedient subjects. The argument here focuses on the politics of ‘accountability’, looking at how many (but not all) activists frame their disobedience through a higher duty of obedience, whether to the law, the state, or to God. It provides some critical reflection on the politics of accountability. The chapter then discusses how, even as they practice accountability, activists locate further opportunities for resistance, turning legal processes into fresh instantiations of disobedience. The conclusion argues that it is vitally important to make space for a politics of disobedience which is not automatically positioned in reference to a higher practice of obedience.

This chapter looks at the influence of Chinese culture on the Hong Kong classroom. It begins by describing the three schools of Chinese philosophy: Legalism, Daoism and Confucianism. Their effects on how teachers develop their strategies for classroom management are discussed. Also, four cultural features of the interpersonal relationships in the Hong Kong classroom are summarized as (1) hierarchical human relationships; (2) collectivism and conformity; (3) Chinese practices of childhood socialization; and (4) the social game of "face". Lastly, the yin and yang doctrine is adopted for understanding the complexity of the classroom and the teaching roles of teachers.

Chapter 1 discusses the intellectual foundations of Chinese law and justice, such as the notions of Heaven, the Mandate of Heaven, Heaven-human interactions, and yin and yang as two primal forces constituting the underlying dynamics of the cosmos and human society. It traces the evolution of penal codes from the Qin dynasty to the Qing dynasty, showing how morality, governance, social order, justice, and wrongdoing were defined and how conceptions of criminal offenses and their punishments evolved. It makes clear that the imperial law and justice were designed to uphold the imperial system and the patriarchal family system as a coherent political-social-moral universe, which was underpinned by the notion of balance between yin and yang and was corresponding to “Heavenly reason.”

During the Age of Total War, the synergistic relationships between Legalist reforms and war mobilization enhanced Qin’s governing capacity and enabled the Qin ruler to establish an empire whose government relied largely on stringent laws and harsh administrations rather than on cooperation between the state and the elite segments of society. Thus, the political system that emerged after the Qin conquest, despite its mighty facade, was intrinsically unstable. The major developments of these eighty years resulted from this unstable political synthesis, and they underlay the eventual formation of the Confucian-Legalist state, a highly stable government system. This chapter analyzes historical developments during these eighty years and beyond, as well as the nature and structure of the resultant Confucian-Legalist state.

This chapter discusses the emergence of a new group of men known as shi during the Age of Transition. Some of the shi wrote treatises expressing their concerns about societal problems and providing solutions for them. This in turn led to the emergence of various philosophies during the Age of Total War. The most influential ones were later called Confucianism, Daoism, and Legalism.

This chapter analyzes five related topics: (1) Legalist transformations, especially those in Qin, in light of their synergistic relationships with warfare; (2) new state-society relationships after the Legalist reforms, particularly the conditions that made total war possible; (3) the development of technologies in response to war-induced competition; (4) the relationships between warfare and large-scale state-sponsored water projects; and (5) the rising power of merchants during the Eastern Zhou and contraction of their power under the anti-commerce Legalist states. The main purpose of the chapter is to set out the quick growth of state power propelled by war, the marginalization of societal forces by increasingly powerful states, and the conditions for making total war.

In the hands of the early fajia (often translated as Legalist) thinkers, classical Chinese moral-political philosophy took a decidedly bureaucratic turn, away from the paradigmatic norm that saw politics as derivative of the moral virtues of the political actors, which characterized the mainstream approach to politics at the time, most famously represented by the Confucians. The early fajia thinkers saw the institution of the state as a domain that required its own operating norm, irreducible to others. In these fajia thinkers, impartiality became the most important institutional norm that eclipses virtues like filiality or even benevolence and righteousness. Furthermore, some early fajia thinkers, especially Shen Dao, would seek to map the state onto the cosmos, essentially merging the two into a single reality such that the state could be perceived to operate “naturally.” All subsequent thinkers had to confront the question of how to deal with the increasingly bureaucratized and powerful state.

The Introduction begins by defining “transitional justice,” explaining its significance, and situating it within the broader fields of international law and international relations. The chapter then describes the book’s focus on understanding why the U.S. government supported certain transitional justice options in the immediate aftermaths of WWII and the Cold War. Later, the chapter describes the book’s other objective: to evaluate which theoretical framework better explains U.S. foreign policy with respect to transitional justice—“legalism,” a term political scientist Gary Bass repurposed in his canonical book on transitional justice (Stay the Hand of Vengeance: The Politics of War Crimes Tribunals), or what the author calls “prudentialism.” This section includes a comprehensive endnote describing the significance of Bass’s book. The chapter goes on to explain the book’s relevance to scholarly and policy circles, to describe the book’s methodology and sources, and to provide an outline of the book’s argument.

This chapter develops a conceptual framework to explain U.S. policy on transitional justice. Specifically, the author considers two theories—the dominant theory of “legalism” and what he calls “prudentialism”—about what motivated U.S. government support for, or opposition to, various transitional justice options for each of this book’s six cases. Part II of this chapter discusses problems and concerns transitional justice represents for international relations, focusing on security and cooperation. Part III reviews what two prominent international relations theories, realism and liberalism, would posit about transitional justice issues. Part IV sets out two transitional justice theories: legalism and prudentialism (which are subsets of liberalism and realism, respectively). Part V discusses the application of these transitional justice theories to this book’s case studies. Much of the analysis in this chapter concentrates on international criminal tribunals because they are the focus of legalism and central to the case studies of this book.

This chapter summarizes the book’s findings. In particular, it assesses whether “legalism” or “prudentialism” better accounts for U.S. policy on transitional justice in the cases of Germany and Japan in the immediate aftermath of WWII as well as Libya, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. The chapter determines that legalism’s empirical claims and causal logic are flawed. The chapter concludes that U.S. policy on transitional justice is ultimately, as prudentialism theorizes, a product of politics, pragmatics, and normative beliefs. Consequently, we should not expect the U.S. government to take a principled or consistent approach to transitional justice. Where political and pragmatic factors are also at stake, the U.S. government’s interests, particularly concerning security, will take precedence. Depending on the context, the U.S. government will thus continue to vary its support across and within the panoply of legalistic and non-legalistic transitional justice options.

This chapter examines the empirical case of property contests (both buildings and land) in contemporary China. Property attains an ‘afterlife’ when state legalism no longer monopolizes the categories of property, but rather, kinship, religious communities, and village life generate their own forms of legalism centred on property. Property holders, while not wholly rejecting the legitimacy of state law, nonetheless question, challenge, contest, and reinterpret its logics. The examples considered here demonstrate that property’s value inheres in legalisms grounded in notions of family, home, and faith and that individuals’ sense of rights’ security is born from such legalisms. Such interpretations create strong affective ties which long outlive the formal basis of property rights in state law, producing irresolvable tensions — property’s afterlife.