Justice as fairness or retribution? Citizen reactions to domestic trials of wartime violence
| Published date | 01 July 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221148223 |
| Author | Risa Kitagawa |
| Date | 01 July 2024 |
Journal of Peace Research
2024, Vol. 61(4) 612 –626
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433221148223
journals.sagepub.com/home/jpr
1225162JPR0010.1177/00223433221148223Journal of Peace ResearchKitagawa
research-article2023
Regular Article
Justice as fairness or retribution?
Citizen reactions to domestic trials
of wartime violence
Risa Kitagawa
Department of Political Science, Northeastern University
Abstract
How do domestic trials addressing wartime violence affect public opinion of government? The legitimation functions
of national courts are well studied in liberal democracies, but less is known about the effects of trials that address
abuses committed during large-scale conflict. This article investigates how the extent to which such trials achieve
procedural justice (fairness in process) and retributive justice (allocation of punishment) affects perceptions of
political legitimacy. I provide survey-experimental evidence from post-conflict El Salvador that leverages the repeal
of a longstanding amnesty law. Although a trial in general improves citizen evaluations of state competence, fairness
and punishment serve crucial – and distinct – legitimation functions. Procedural fairness significantly increased
citizens’ willingness to comply with state authorities, regardless of trial outcome. Yet, an unfair trial, when coupled
with punishment, bolstered trust in politicians and the judiciary. This suggests a trade-off between public preferences
for fairness and an ‘iron fist’ approach to violence. The findings reveal the limits of procedural justice in a post-
conflict environment and furnish new insights on the multifaceted functions of human rights trials.
Keywords
courts, judicial politics, legitimacy, procedural justice, retributive justice, transitional justice
Courts convey important signals about government. Cit-
izens can observe rulings to evaluate whether the govern-
ment is beholden to special interests (Carrubba, 2009;
Ginsburg & Moustafa, 2008) or sufficiently breaks from
past regimes’ patterns of abuse (Gonza
´les-Ocantos,
2016; Minow, 2002). Yet, the effects of court activities
on broader perceptions of political legitimacy are often
ambiguous. In Latin America, for example, political
legitimacy has remained elusive over two decades, despite
the region’s reputation as an active adopter of judicial
responses to dictatorship-era crimes that helped galvanize
a global ‘justice cascade’ (Lutz & Sikkink, 2001).
1
Why?
This article investigates how differences in the nature
of domestic human rights trials – criminal prosecutions
of human rights abusers conducted in a national court –
affect citizen perceptions of political legitimacy. Existing
studies on human rights trials typically only account for
the incidence or absence of a trial. This approach has
revealed crucial insights on how these trials affect state-
level outcomes such as rights protections and armed
conflict (e.g. Dancy & Wiebelhaus-Brahm, 2018; Kim
& Sikkink, 2010; Olsen, Payne & Reiter, 2010). How-
ever, understanding their effects on citizen views of gov-
ernment requires a more fine-grained approach. Not all
human rights trials secure convictions; nor are they
always conducted fairly. This is particularly true of
rule-of-law environments where leaders can influence
courts for political gain (Pereira, 2005; Shen-Bayh,
2018), threatening to erode public confidence. Examin-
ing this vital yet underexplored variation in the nature of
human rights trials, and not just their occurrence, can
Corresponding author:
r.kitagawa@northeastern.edu
1
LAPOP survey data indicate that most Latin American countries
score political legitimacy less than the scale’s midpoint (Zechmeister
& Lupu, 2019).
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