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Green Transitional Justice By RachelKillean and LaurenDempster, London: Routledge, 2025, 304 pp., £31.99

Year: 2026
Type: book-review
Abstract: For whom is justice delivered after mass violence when the forest is a victim, and the soil bears the scars of war?This question lies at the heart of Rachel Killean and Lauren Dempster's Green Transitional Justice.In the field of transitional justice, which primarily analyses human victims and state crimes, 1 this book implores scholars to consider a radical but necessary widening of the lens to include ecological harm and non-human victims.The authors argue that by clinging to anthropocentric assumptions, transitional justice has been offering 'incomplete justice' (p.221).They call for a paradigm shift: to reimagine transitional justice by framing nature as a victim of mass violence.This ambitious and timely book, appearing as the world increasingly faces environmental degradation due to armed violence, 2 re-examines the purpose of transitional justice, especially in post-conflict societies.Killean and Dempster weave together socio-legal critique, decolonial and feminist approaches to justice, and insights from diverse case studies (from Colombia's jurisprudence recognizing the rights of nature to Uganda's overlooked environmental losses) to conceptualize a 'greener' approach to transitional justice.The result is an engaging work that expands the normative horizons of the field.One of the central arguments of the book is that current analytical approaches to transitional justice are rife with anthropocentric considerations and assumptions.Legal and institutional frameworks have historically treated nature as an object or passive background, relevant only insofar as human interests are affected.This entrenched human-centrism, the authors argue, creates a 'false dichotomy between humans and the natural world' (p.108), precluding states from considering the full spectrum of harm caused by war and repression.The aftermath of conflicts often includes devastated forests, poisoned rivers, and disrupted ecosystems, yet these non-human losses rarely figure in post-war commission reports and trials.Killean and Dempster trace how existing categories of legal disciplines (human rights law, international criminal law, and state-centric mechanisms) have constrained the ability of legal 1 For instance, see R. G. Teitel, Transitional Justice (2002).
DOI: 10.1111/jols.70032
Language: English
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7123342969
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