Yuvraj Joshi (doctoral candidate, Yale Law School) has posted to SSRN his article Affirmative Action as Transitional Justice, 2020 Wisc. L. Rev. (forthcoming). Here is the abstract:
What role does affirmative action play in transitioning toward a more just society? The two literatures best equipped to answer this question — transitional justice and affirmative action — have neglected both the question and one another. Transitional justice scholars have focused on a limited set of measures (such as truth commissions and criminal prosecutions) and overlooked the role of affirmative action in facilitating transition. At the same time, affirmative action scholars have neglected the ways affirmative action may be part of a larger transitional justice project. Bringing these literatures into conversation for the first time, this Article shows how integrating affirmative action and transitional justice can advance our understanding of both practices. Affirmative action can bring attention to structural inequalities in transitional societies and help delineate the boundaries of transitional justice. In so doing, affirmative action can bridge a divide between the field of transitional justice and the phenomenon of societal transition that it seeks to understand and facilitate. Transitional justice, on the other hand, can elucidate how the period of transition informs affirmative action’s features and functions; it can also illuminate affirmative action’s strengths and shortcomings in bringing about a more just society. Affirmative action should therefore be added to the transitional justice ‘toolkit’ and anchored in transitional justice concepts and debates.
Read the full article here.
