Research Theme: Conflict and Law

Transitional Justice is primarily concerned with facilitating movement from conflict to peace.  Increasingly, however, both conflict and processes of resolution are being understood as fluid with dynamics that change over time.  Consequently processes of conflict prevention, peace-making and peace-building are now recognized as closely related (See Report of the Secretary-General on the Rule of Law and Transitional Justice in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies).  TJI aims to make a focused contribution to these broader debates by exploring two converse assertions.  First, that greater understanding and acknowledgement of the relationship between law and the causes of conflict are necessary not just to transition, but also to preventing earlier conflict escalation.  In particular, TJI seeks to undertake a critical appraisal of the role of law in the management, maintenance and end of conflict.  The second assertion is that ‘transitional mechanisms’ exhibited in societies emerging from protracted conflicts can have a constructive role if promoted when conflict is at a nascent stage. 

Accordingly, TJI research in this area provides detailed analyses of how legal responses aimed at a military containment of conflict can operate to escalate conflict.  Such responses can undercut (often concurrent) legal measures aimed at eliminating the political causes of conflict.  This strand of TJI work has both a doctrinal (or technical-legal) and a socio-legal focus.  In particular, it addresses the lack of consensus on applicable legal norms – a lack of consensus that had particular significance in Northern Ireland.  This lack of consensus, on when the legal criteria establishing the existence of an internal armed conflict have been satisfied, is compounded by the lack of sanction for human rights and humanitarian violations which typically take place during such conflicts.  Moreover, post-September 11th, TJI research around this theme increasingly addresses global-level tensions between military and political responses to conflict.