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This commentary reflects on the contributions that human geography has made to climate change research, as well as future directions for human geographic work on climate change. I suggest that one of the key achievements of the field is to render climate change a boundary object: an entity whose interpretive flexibility allows it to become a shared object of knowledge that, in principle, facilitates collaboration across disparate communities of practice. However, the ways in which that contribution has been made, and made possible, have effects that ripple elsewhere. While the subfield of political ecology and its historiographical methods have played vital roles in laying the intellectual foundations for human geographic work on climate change, and thus its ability to construct climate change as a boundary object in the first place, I suggest that they and other neo‐Marxian approaches to the study of the (climate‐changing) environment tend to diminish human geographic engagement with the future as an object of scholarly inquiry. To address that limitation and help push climate‐changed geographies in novel directions, I suggest that climate‐changed futures be engaged problematically. I then conclude with a discussion of key empirical domains—chiefly climate reparations and climate adaptation—where such problem‐oriented work may be productively applied. This commentary explores one of human geography's key contributions to climate change knowledge: that it has helped make climate change political. However, the ways that human geographers have made climate change political often rely on historiographic methods, which can bound geographic engagement with the future as an object of inquiry in its own right. The commentary then offers ways to open up the future in geographic work on climate change, specifically through problem‐oriented and reparative critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to the burgeoning literature related to reparative planning, with an emphasis on housing policy. After exploring the state of theorizing related to reparative planning, this paper describes its three central dimensions: public recognition, material redistribution, and social/spatial transformation. The authors use these dimensions to evaluate a housing policy designed to repair harms to Black residents in Portland, Oregon. This in-depth analysis draws on survey, interview, and focus group data to explore the degree to which residents’ experiences of the policy reflect these three dimensions. The paper concludes with implications for other municipalities considering reparative housing policies, namely the need to explicitly name the harm(s) the policy is designed to repair, for robust accountability measures to guide policy implementation and for holistic community development strategies that attend to multiple dimensions of racial reparation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

America’s New Racial Battle Lines: Protect v. Repair uses a historical institutional lens to understand contemporary American politics. The book argues that American elites today are divided into two alliances, one focused on protecting the privileged position of white Christians and the other seeking to repair the harms that continue to be inflicted on Black people and America’s other minority communities. This represents a significant departure from the late twentieth-century divide between color blindness and race consciousness. The authors analyze the narratives, actors, and policy proposals related to the two camps. The book is meticulous in its analysis, yet by emphasizing institutions, it downplays the role of ideology that holds these camps together. Furthermore, focusing on race as the structuring principle obscures the complex intersectionality of contemporary political ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To confront durable racial inequalities that stem from the afterlives of slavery in the United States, Hunter introduces a framework for radical reparations that characterizes much of the book. This framework pulls back the blinds on America’s metaphorical mansion to reveal the unsightly piles upon PILESSS – representing the seven forms of reparations Hunter envisions: Political, Intellectual, Legal, Economic, Social, Spatial, and Spiritual. We provide a review of the book and aim to further elevate an agenda for radical reparations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can the legacy of state violence undermine participation in transitional justice services designed to consolidate peace after conflict? We argue that, in the aftermath of armed fighting, state-perpetrated violence leads to reduced uptake of government reconciliation policies. We leverage spatial and temporal variation in levels of civilian victimization by perpetrator and find that, in contrast to violence committed by non-state groups, violence carried out by state forces against civilians is associated with lower levels of enlistment in Colombia's state-run victims' registry. We replicate this relationship using survey data and present evidence linking victimization by the state to lower levels of trust in the government overall. Together, our analyses demonstrate that disaggregating the identity of armed actors can provide significant theoretical and empirical advances in our understanding of peacemaking and post-conflict reconstruction. In the Colombian case, the legacy of state violence leads to the systematic exclusion of certain types of victims from transitional justice and undermines trust in the institutions responsible for building durable pathways to peace. Consequently, our findings have implications for the design of transitional justice policies, the study of the legacies of conflict on political and social outcomes, and processes of post-conflict peacebuilding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic analyses of losses and damages or post-disaster needs assessments (PDNAs) are silent about the longstanding reparatory claims related to the legacies of African enslavement, colonial violence and indigenous dispossession that compound uneven racialized geographies in the Caribbean. This paper unpacks these so-called 'objective' valuations drawing attention to their (neo)liberal framings, technocratic underpinnings, and historical origins in the Caribbean plantation economy. Using case studies of catastrophic hurricanes Matthew (2016), Irma (2017) and Dorian (2019) in Haiti, Antigua and Barbuda, and The Bahamas respectively, the paper exposes critical tensions, knowledge hierarchies, and contradictions embedded within empirical assessments that justify and prioritize preferred policies of powerful international development, financial and governance institutions. PDNAs under-value and neglect important community and local knowledge, solidarity practices, cultural institutions, and relational ethics in the face of climate disasters in these Caribbean islands. Taking a Black geographies and political economy approach, the paper addresses the limitations and risks associated with PDNAs, deemed political tools or technologies of climate disaster that reinforce oppression. To advance an emancipatory climate justice agenda to enable more radical reparative measures and possibilities, the paper suggests that analyses and political strategy must be grounded in people's history, cultural, ethical, and communal governance practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human rights bodies formulate highly specific orders to minimize the risk of State non-compliance. However, specificity comes at a cost, reducing State autonomy when local agents implement measures on the ground. This article develops the concept of specificity in human rights reparations and analyses the specificity formulas deployed by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in structural measures as a form of positive subsidiarity. We employ qualitative data analysis software to process 322 measures of non-repetition ordered by the Inter-American Court through to the end of 2020. This analysis identifies two modes of specificity: process-based, which defines procedures for compliance, and outcome-based, which sets the goals for the State. After coding over 800 segments of text from Court decisions, we outline an exhaustive legal framework with 26 process-based categories and 2 outcome-based forms of specificity. We conclude that outcome-based specificity can help courts balance positive subsidiarity and State autonomy in the design of reparations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Related Articles The number of monetary redress programs for survivors of nonrecent abuse in out‐of‐home care is growing. These programs help make monetary remedies more accessible to survivors. However, the reasons that justify these programs also encourage policy makers to adopt paternalistic measures. This article argues that most paternalistic restrictions are unjustified because they infringe on survivors' autonomy without clearly benefiting them.Kahn‐Nisser, Sara. 2018. “Constructive Criticism: Shaming, Incentives, and Human Rights Reforms.” Politics & Policy 46(1): 58–83. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12240.Winter, Stephen. 2020. “Tools for Tragedy: Procedures for Assessing Historic Redress Claims.” Politics & Policy 49(1): 162–85. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12385.Woessner, Matthew, and April Kelly‐Woessner. 2006. “Slavery Reparations and Race Relations in America: Assessing How the Restitutions Debate Influences Public Support for Blacks, Civil Rights, and Affirmative Action.” Politics & Policy 34(1): 134–54. 10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2006.00007.x. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I articulate the value of understanding antiracism from a materialist perspective, drawing from the concept of racial capitalism. I critique the lack of accounting for race in class-first paradigms of critical scholarship in music education, arguing that racial hierarchy laid the foundation for capitalist exploitation through colonialism. Employing critical race theory, I discuss the racial nature of class formation in the United States, focusing on the connection between housing, school funding, and so-called high-performing music programs. I then discuss the limitations of current anti-racist scholarship in music education, suggesting that its focus on representation and classroom practice neglects the material conditions that shape music teaching. Drawing from Olúfémi Táíwò's work, I propose a constructive approach to reparations in music education that attends to the material and symbolic aspects of white supremacy inside and outside of the music classroom. By taking a both/and approach to antiracism, music education could contribute to the self-determination of racially oppressed people and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The movement for reparations for those enslaved on the North American continent from 1450 to 1866 has a long history fraught with debate, criticized by individuals on both the right and left sides of the political spectrum. Specific points of contention include how much money should be allocated, who the recipients and potential liable parties should be, and what specific form reparations should take. Accounting for this historical opposition, this paper employs a corpus-based discourse analysis to examine the communicative barriers to implementing reparations. The corpora consisted of YouTube comments posted to news reports of six cities' reparations proposals. I utilized Sketch Engine to examine frequency of keywords, collocations, and concordance, followed by a close-reading discourse analysis of lexical, grammatical, and tonal elements. The analysis revealed myriad constructions of reparations resulting in inertia, the institutional tendency to preserve the status quo. This discursive formation is consequential not only for its implications for reparations, but for broader structural reform efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both South Africa and Argentina have experienced tyrannical and oppressive periods of political leadership. Ultimately, this has led both nations to ask - how do we create a stable future, and how do we come to terms with the crimes of the past? This piece will look at the mechanisms that were employed by both countries throughout this process and the outcomes they achieved. More importantly though, it will frame the responses in a contract analogy. It will look to the ‘bargain’ struck between victims and perpetrators. It will then critically analyse the way that existing power structures shape this ‘bargain’ and how it impacts the extent and quality of truth, along with outcomes for victims.

Since the full-scale invasion of Russian Federation, public finances (PF) have been operating under conditions of uncertainty and unprecedented security challenges, akin to those experienced by the entire economic system. The level of uncertainty is such that it overshadows the current financial crises and parity with the consequences of the Second World War. This became the core objective of the study, which consisted of substantiating conceptual approaches to the formation of debt policy, considering the peculiarities of the projection of martial law on the functioning of PF. The research employs a systematic approach to methodology, integrating methods of factual and situational analysis that are grounded in international standards for public debt assessment and theoretical generalisations. Furthermore, through a comparative analysis, the interrelationships and mutual influences between debt policy and budget strategy are monitored. Furthermore, the study assesses the potential of leveraging the frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine's post-war recovery through the PF system. The study revealed that the debt policy is an integral component of the PF system. Unlike other program documents, it demonstrated resilience to both endogenous and exogenous challenges and the capacity to implement corrective measures during economic crises. This has laid the foundation for a Marshall Plan-like strategy for Ukraine. The PF strategy, which was approved just before the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, prompted discussions on enhancing the predictability of budgetary policy and debt sustainability. This, together with the adoption of a medium-term public debt management strategy, became the basis for the actual establishment of the Debt Agency as a legal entity, which in the future will ensure, on the one hand, the privileging of grants among the financial mechanisms for covering the budget deficit, and, on the other hand, an additional level of budgetary strategy for generating a multiplier effect from the borrowed funds for post-war reconstruction. On the other hand, this approach will create conditions for the transition from external sources of financing the budget deficit to internal ones by expanding and diversifying the range of investors in government securities. It is proved that debt policy in both the short and medium term will serve as the basis for the implementation of the budgetary strategy of post-war reconstruction, and will create conditions for accelerating the process of forced reparations to compensate for the damage caused by the Russian Federation.

The article examines the topical issues of doctrine and international judicial practice regarding the determination of the State's responsibility for international wrongful acts, in particular, those related to the activities of foreign non-State armed groups. The authors analyse the international legal framework of State responsibility for international wrongful acts, as well as individual criminal liability of individuals. The paper substantiates a set of economic and legal instruments for the implementation of international responsibility (reparations, satisfaction, restitution, economic sanctions) as a mechanism for ensuring compliance with international law by States. The study identifies the legal positions of the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the European Court of Human Rights and other international judicial institutions on the application of the concepts of "effective control" and "overall control" in judicial practice, as well as problematic issues of law enforcement.

Widely celebrated as one of the most influential twentieth-century Australian poets, Judith Wright occupies a central and uncontested space in the national literary canon. The political drive of her poetry, intertwined with her lifelong commitment to ecological and Indigenous rights activism, transformed the platform afforded her as a ‘poet of the land’ into a discursive space through which to contest the legitimacy of her own positioning – as a settler, as a poet, and perhaps most significantly as an anticolonial ally. Despite this, and despite the growing urgency of conversations about institutional decolonization, Wright’s complex legacy as a decolonial agent remains largely uncontested. This article considers Wright’s poetic capacity to strike at the foundation upon which she stands and to excavate the violent histories beneath it; however, it also illuminates the inherited literary traditions that stunt her disruptive efforts. Drawing her contribution as a writer-activist into broader reflections on decolonization, I demonstrate the lasting significance of Wright’s reparative gestures – acknowledging and attending to active silences – as a timely model for literary canon reformation. Such (re)considerations of Wright’s legacy raise pertinent questions about what constitutes decolonial literary activism and gesture towards the silences as yet unbroken by the broader decolonial project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this review, I address Hunter’s conceptualization of a radical reparations framework and its implications for how we might consider the potentials and limitations of working towards reparations under the current political climate. I highlight how Hunter’s framework takes us beyond the dominant fixation of reparations discourse on pecuniary recompense. I conclude by considering the prospects of this framework for reparations beyond the US and how the expansion of the idea of reparations might push the boundaries of palatability even further than before. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early March 1951, the Chancellor of West Germany, Konrad Adenauer, announced to the three Western powers occupying his country – the United States, Great Britain, and France – that his government was ready to acquiesce to their demands and settle the external debts Germany had accumulated before and after World War II. This announcement was made at roughly the same time that Israel presented its claim for reparations, which was added onto two other kinds of compensation claims the Jewish world had been already promoting in the aftermath of the Holocaust: claims for restitution of property and personal indemnification. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (IMFA) was gravely worried about the possibility that West Germany would not be able to settle its moral debt to the Jewish people and the Jewish state due to the need to repay its commercial debts in the international arena. The present article examines the policy implemented by Israel with the aim of avoiding such a scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the codification of international crimes in domestic law, the prosecution of international crimes committed during Guatemala's Internal Armed Conflict, and the challenges in implementing the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC). It underscores the essential role of civil society in the fight against impunity through strategic litigation and memory initiatives, thus contributing to advances in justice. It exposes the impact of Inter-American Court of Human Rights' rulings demanding reparations for victims of international crimes as a catalyst for domestic prosecution efforts. Furthermore, the establishment of the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) with the support of the UN represented a significant advance in justice. However, the abrupt end by the Guatemalan government of the CICIG was a significant setback. Ongoing challenges involve maintaining progress within Guatemala's criminal justice system, as many justice operators who had worked alongside CICIG faced criminalization and were forced into exile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, Medria Connolly and I wrote an article that we consider to be the theoretical foundation of our reparations activism. Since that time, a world‐wide pandemic and unprecedented protests following the extra‐judicial killing of George Floyd dramatically changed the psycho‐social landscape surrounding the reparations debate. Evidence of the third spontaneously erupted across the world and was instantaneously televised into the homes of an audience held captive by pandemic restrictions. However, a fierce and sophisticated backlash that historically follows Black advancement also materialized. Group and individual psychological strategies are offered that may help sustain the reparations movement in the face of these powerful counter forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The psychological case for reparations offers a framework for understanding the emotional complexity inherent in the centuries‐long resistance to granting reparations to African Americans for its three hundred years of chattel slavery and its legacies—Jim Crow, redlining, mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings, and voter suppression. A central component of the resistance is moral injury, which Bryan Nichols and I maintain is the primary reason why the concept of reparations is so emotionally charged. The disavowal of the collective trauma for both the formerly enslaved and former slave owners creates moral wounds which show up as metaphorical ghosts that haunt US culture. Behavioral scientists who understand the complexity of both individual and large group dynamics are called upon to acknowledge and repair the intergenerational moral wounds of chattel slavery and assume leadership in the reparative process—to "transform ghosts into ancestors." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing a connection between the "repetition compulsion" and reparations movements' demand for a "guarantee of non‐repeat," this essay examines some of the psychological workings of implication in systemic racism by highlighting individual, familial, and collective histories, and by looking at some of what is currently taking place in psychoanalytic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on caste to date has examined the largely contemporary situation of the ex-untouchables and descendants of the caste-enslaved in India, the Dalits, and made policy suggestions. This paper builds an argument based on historic origins and the evolution of the caste social structure and on how this longest surviving system of oppression continues to have a severe impact on the lives of the descendants. It not only provides a justification for why reparations are owed to this community and are necessary to bridge the social gap, but also looks at the various forms it could take, as a legislated policy of redress for an historic injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories of self-interest and ingroup-favouritism dominate Western thought. They give Black reparations in the US little chance of electoral success while African Americans remain a minority. Could Black reparations become feasible despite this limitation? I propose 'relational identity theory', a combination of Simon's (1993) utility theory as well as Aron and Aron's (1986) self-expansion theory, as an alternative to theories of self-interest and ingroup-favouritism. The theory allows for the inclusion of an outgroup in the self-concept. An online reaction-time procedure (n = 1,341) suggests that among White non-Hispanic respondents, implicit Black identification is the strongest predictor of support for Black reparations. Pooled reaction-time data from three studies involving 1,594 White non-Hispanic respondents suggests that implicit Black identification is based on feelings of closeness, warmth, and empathic concern for African Americans resembling Black group attachment. Significant implicit Black identifiers among White non-Hispanic respondents fall between Black non-Hispanic and other White non-Hispanic respondents in their race-related political opinions. 'Relational identity theory' can help economists, political scientists, and psychologists explain how majority domination (e.g. slavery and Jim Crow in the United States) could be overcome despite the democratic principle of majority rule. The theory suggests that Black reparations might become politically feasible one day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reparations should be central to political-economic analyses of inequality. But, books on inequality usually demur from a systematic analysis of reparations. Britain's Black Debt (Hilary McD. Beckles), From Here to Equality (William A Darity Jr and A Kirsten Mullen), and Reconsidering Reparations (Olúfẹmi O. Táíwò) are three respectable exceptions. Distinct but interlinked, might these books unearth more, if re-viewed together? Combined, what do these books reveal about the three most important questions about reparations? Why are reparations needed, what are the reasons for the limited support for the payment of reparations, and how might reparations be redesigned? Using these books as case studies, this article addresses these research questions. A synthesis of the evidence shows that reparations are urgently needed not only for past injustices, as commonly claimed, but also for present, and future reasons. Persistent myths, ideologies, and institutions tend to be obstructive, but these impediments can be resolved. Even so, reparationists need to also consider new ways of ensuring that, if existing inequalities and social stratification are addressed, the fission will not re-open. Closure must also challenge ecological and economic imperialism, not simply climate injustice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractFor centuries, international reparations were commonly exacted as a form of victor’s justice after war. Following World War II, however, the bitter legacy of the Treaty of Versailles and West Germany’s compensation of Nazism’s victim shifted this practice, ushering in a novel moral economy of international reparations. Yet, while recent decades have seen increased transnational activism around reparations, as well as interstate aid payments and official apologies, international reparations remain infrequent, and agreements often fail to end financial claims. This paper argues that one explanation for this lackluster record is a central paradox relating to finality. Though international reparations are designed to settle accounts and provide a basis for deeper reconciliation, by opening issues of traumatic memory to public debate, they often achieve the opposite effect and inspire a cascade of further financial claims. As evidence, we examine three cases of international reparations’ occurrence and rejection: Germany’s reparations for Nazi-era crimes, the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) formation following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, and reparations negotiated but removed from the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. Employing process tracing methods on archival documents, we demonstrate in each case how this paradox helps explain international reparations’ limitations as a practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Reparations after Species Extinctions: An Account of Reparative Interspecies Justice" by Anna Wienhues and Alfonso Donoso explores the concept of reparations in the context of species extinctions. The authors argue that there is a moral obligation to provide reparations for the harm caused by human-induced extinctions. They propose a framework for reparative interspecies justice that includes measures such as habitat restoration, species reintroduction, and the recognition of the rights of the biotic community. The article emphasizes the importance of considering the perspectives and interests of non-human beings in discussions of justice and reparations. [Extracted from the article]

I assess a justification for the granting of transitional amnesties conditional, at the minimum, upon full disclosure of wrongdoing by perpetrators. According to this rationale, such amnesties are morally legitimate because they foster restorative justice. I distinguish between two conceptions of restorative justice that I call the punishment-deprioritizing and punishment-prescribing conceptions. I argue that while conditional amnesties granted to perpetrators of minor offences conditional upon full disclosure, verbal apology and reparations could promote restorative justice well enough to justify them in the eyes of adherents of the punishment-deprioritizing conception, conditional amnesties in favour of perpetrators of serious human rights abuses, because they are unlikely ever to be conditional upon perpetrators' carrying out burdensome reparations, are likely to promote restorative justice on the punishment-deprioritizing conception only to a limited extent and not enough to justify them from the standpoint of adherents to this conception. Conditional amnesties, I contend, cannot ever promote restorative justice on the punishment-prescribing conception because it holds that punishment is indispensable for the achievement of the aims of restorative justice and amnesties exempt perpetrators from criminal punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Keller Easterling is an unconventional thinker. Spanning writing, creative practice and teaching, her work draws on disparate sources and intellectual traditions: from media theory to the philosophy of ecology; economic geography to game theory; anarchisms to feminisms; and from decolonisation to political discourse analysis. Infrastructure, mutualism, reparations, freedom, fugitivity, indeterminacy, whiteness, failure and solidarity emerge as core concerns in her wider attempts to develop an artistic approach capable of contending with contemporary forms of violence and power. In late 2023, Architectural Theory Review (ATR), in conjunction with the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), invited Easterling to discuss her recent work on the civil rights movement in the US. Easterling sat down with Endriana Audisho (UTS) and Jasper Ludewig (ATR) to elaborate on the themes and questions that emerged from this work, discussing their relevance to her scholarship, pedagogy and broader spatial practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I offer how urban planning should approach technology within the context of systemic racism, advocating for a reparative approach to address the issues of urban technology perpetuating today's racial inequality and hindering efforts to redress historical oppression. I identify three mechanisms – formalization, context removal and legitimization, and penalization and extraction – that illustrate how urban technology perpetuates historical inequalities, often penalizing marginalized groups under the pretext of neutrality and fairness. Then, I discuss methodologies of reparative urban science, aiming to use urban technology to challenge race-neutral ideologies and create data-driven narratives for reparations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that if we claim colonialism is per se wrong, then we face a dilemma that stems from the fact that many states today are a result of past colonialism. We believe that postcolonial states have a right to self-determination such that it is wrong to colonize them. But this entails that there is a process that can turn a colonial state into a rightful state, and so we admit that there is a way to carry out colonialism that is not wrongful. To avoid this conclusion, we must accept that the wrongness of colonialism has been superseded or remedied. These options either entail instrumentalism, which admits that colonialism is not per se wrong, or they are implausible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of the demonization of Africana Religious Traditions (ARTs), peoples of African descent, in shame and ignorance, and seduced by the benefits of a ruthless capitalist Christianity, fail to affirm the value of their ancestral spirituality. In Jamaica and other parts of the Anglophone Caribbean, the word "Obeah", a label for African spirituality, remains misunderstood, demonized, and criminalized as Christians consistently thwart any effort to value it. Dibịa-Professor Umeh's spiritual oeuvre provides necessary redress to the epistemicide that fuels the continued criminalization of "Obeah". This article presents John Umeh's After God is Dibịa: Igbo Cosmology, Divination & Sacred Science in Nigeria, Vols. 1 and 2 as performative texts that affirm traditional African Priesthood as honorable, valuable, and necessary, while negating the myth of a superior white male god and consequent female inferiority. I explore these acts of writing the Igbo Dibịahood as sacred performances of testimony, communion and redemption. The emphasis on Dibịa ethics, I posit as offering a critique of Christian priestcraft. African defined Ọbịa rejects eurocentric impositions on the term by affirming it as a healing vocation and inclusive priesthood defined by wisdom and knowledge. Through attention to the feminine space of revival, Ọbịa balmyard, I explore similarities with continental antecedents and present female Dibịahood as a radical faith tradition that insists on the power of Nne Agwu, Mother Holy Spirit. The respell of Ọbịa through eight emanations is shown as a potent antidote against epistemicide. By affirming the sacredness of matriarchal power, the dignity of traditional Dibịahood and the ethical force of traditional knowledge, Umeh exemplifies a priest class worthy of the name. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Much discussion over Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine focuses on the inability to charge aggression. However, another approach might be available: charging this under the ICC crimes against humanity (CAH) residual clause. First proposed in 2010 by Benjamin Ferencz, who lamented the circumscribed reach of aggression under the 'Kampala Compromise', the proposal has met with scepticism, primarily given that textbook aggression targets military forces, not civilians. Yet, civilian populations disproportionately bear the brunt of the violence of modern aggression (often being its direct targets). Russia's 2022 invasion is but the most recent and compelling example. Thus, this article resuscitates Ferencz's proposal, arguing that Russian leaders could be charged with using illegal force as a CAH under the residual clause. This approach would have practical advantages: initiating aggression in the Kremlin links liability to Putin much more directly for killing Ukrainian civilians, and charging it as CAH opens human victims to ICC participation and reparations. There are theoretical advantages, too, with utilitarian/retributive objectives better satisfied. Moreover, Ferencz's approach is better than recently proposed alternatives: using aggression merely as a gravity/liability modes/sentencing enhancer or alleging breach of the right to self-determination as the residual clause gravamen (arguably creating problems with victim group identification). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paying reparations to Black Americans has long been contentiously debated. This article addresses an unexamined pillar of this debate: the United States has a long-standing social norm that if an individual or community has suffered a harm, it is considered right for the federal government to provide some measure of what we term “reparatory compensation.” In discussing this norm and its implications for Black American reparations, we first describe the scale, categories, and interlocking and compounding effects of discriminatory harms by introducing a taxonomy of illustrative racial harms from slavery to the present. We then reveal how the social norm, precedent, and federal programs operate to provide victims with reparatory compensation, reviewing federal programs that offer compensation, such as environmental disasters, market failures, and vaccine injuries. We conclude that the government already has the norm, precedent, expertise, and resources to provide reparations to Black Americans.

During a period of rising partisan and racial polarization, how do partisanship, ideology, and racial antagonism influence attitudes toward reparations policies directed at the descendants of slaves? In this article, we use a wealth of public opinion data to examine trends in attitudes toward reparations and analyze the correlates of opposition to reparations proposals. We hypothesize that, given the ascendance over the past decade of a powerful racial justice movement and ensuing conservative backlash, racial attitudes should be particularly powerful in determining attitudes toward reparations. Using four original, nationally representative surveys, we show that negative racial attitudes play a central role in determining opposition to reparations, with effects that typically rival or exceed those of Republican partisanship or conservative ideology.

As a growing number of states and municipalities consider reparative policies for Black Americans, it is important to understand what shapes support for and opposition to these policies. We explore the role that awareness of racial inequality plays in shaping attitudes. Drawing on data from a large, representative survey in Detroit and one national survey, we find that awareness of racial inequality plays a powerful role in the likelihood of supporting reparative policies. Yet, in follow-up surveys, we find that exposing respondents to information on the rationale for and importance of reparations does not shift public support. These findings suggest that it is the awareness of racial inequality that is cultivated over time that appears to be the dominant force in building support for reparations. These findings are particularly important during a time when many school districts are severely restricting access to information about the history of Black Americans.

In March 2021, the city council in Evanston, Illinois, began distributing reparations funds to Black residents in the form of $25,000 housing grants. In doing so, Evanston became the first city in the United States to provide publicly funded reparations to Black people for generations of racist policies, including redlining. Why did the reparations program first emerge in Evanston? This article provides an in-depth look at the politics of the policy design process and describes the unique political circumstances that allowed this historic policy to pass with near-unanimous support. As communities throughout the United States consider how to deliver reparations to Black Americans, the debate over Evanston’s ordinance serves as a cautionary tale for how ambitious historic policies may become watered down when political expedience trumps the political insights of Black residents.

We consider two local reparations cases—the Evanston Restorative Housing Program and Chicago reparations for police torture survivors. We argue that the programs are shaped by the differing political opportunities, the local context, and the social location of their advocates given that one was constructed within government systems in Evanston and the other largely by grassroots organizers in Chicago. Furthermore, both programs are criticized to varying degrees as being exclusive in their design and implementation. We term this exclusion a process of deliberative marginalization, whereby some of the most vulnerable and most directly affected beneficiaries of a redress initiative are left out of deliberations and implementation decisions about the initiative’s design. Subsequently, this study shows both the promise and constraints of reparations policy at the level of local government.

In Lithuania, the 90s marked the beginnings of a transitional period toward the reconstruction of a democratic state. On the one hand, it emerged as the ideal model, a new societal and state project, a democratic society, with a state founded on respect for the law and for human rights. On the other hand, the past made its presence felt as a result of administrative and judicial heritage, but also of a pattern socially reproduced at the level of human interactions between those whose rights were violated and those who violated these rights. Among those whose rights were abusively violated in the old regime were those dispossessed of properties and of their right over them, during the communist period. The old regime’s abusive seizing of properties was a prejudice brought to the dispossessed. The present paper intends to analyse whether property restitution in Lithuania was part of a more extensive process, entitled transitional justice in the literature. The first part of the paper describes the theoretical lens as well as conceptual aspects. The second part focuses on property legislation and on the function laws fulfilled in the reparations process. The paper has a heuristic value and constitutes itself as part of the research in the field of transitional justice and property restitution.