The emerging corporate turn in transitional justice
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00108367231161264 |
| Author | Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Review Essay |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367231161264
Cooperation and Conflict
2023, Vol. 58(4) 561 –571
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/00108367231161264
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The emerging corporate turn
in transitional justice
Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen
Abstract
This essay reviews recent developments in transitional justice (TJ) scholarship that represent
an emerging corporate turn in TJ. TJ has traditionally focused primarily on states and state-like
actors, a movement that has gone hand in hand with the increasing standardization of TJ as a field
of practice. Highlighting some of the limits to this model of TJ, scholars have since early 2000s
been calling for the need to include economic actors in the TJ system. These four books that have
all been published between 2020 and 2022 reflect a new momentum for this movement within
TJ scholarship. They all highlight, in different ways, how complimentary innovative mechanisms
and creative legal combinations have led and can lead to holding economic actors accountable
for past abuse. Corporate accountability has been a blind spot in the increasingly standardized
approach to TJ, but this emerging corporate turn represents a possibility to innovating the TJ
standard to include “new” actors as subjects of accountability. All books, however, also show
that this is far from a straightforward process as it involves transforming the deeply engrained
and rigid international law and human rights system, which have usually protected economic elites
and focused on states.
Keywords
business and human rights, corporate accountability, corporate turn, international law,
transitional justice
Reviewed works
Payne, Leigh A, Laura Bernal-Bermúdez and Gabriel Pereira (eds) (2022)
Economic Actors and the Limits of Transitional Justice: Truth and Justice for
Business Complicity in Human Rights Violations. Oxford: British Academy
Scholarship.
Kyriakakis, Joanna (2021) Corporations, Accountability and International
Criminal Law: Industry and Atrocity. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Corresponding author:
Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen, Roskilde University, 14.1. Universitetsvej 1, Postbox 260, 4000 Roskilde,
Denmark.
Email: lijeja@ruc.dk
1161264CAC0010.1177/00108367231161264Cooperation and ConflictJakobsen
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