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A corporate turn? Insights from Colombia, the world's contemporary laboratory for transitional justice

Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Corporate accountability remains marginal in transitional justice, despite growing evidence of economic actors’ complicity in armed conflicts. This article examines Colombia's transitional justice system to explain the persistent exclusion of corporate responsibility. Drawing on Robert Cover's concepts of nomos , narrative, and polynomia, it shows how state‑centric transitional justice scriptures legitimize the omission of economic dimensions. Colombia's Special Jurisdiction for Peace provides a revealing case; though it leads globally in judicial actions involving businesses, most complicit corporations remain untouched. Linking local practices to the global transitional justice scripture, the article argues that an internationally standardized nomos narrows transitional justice into jurispathic, state‑centred practices that confine knowledge, privilege law over politics, and cast economic actors as neutral. These entrenched normative structures hinder the practical translation of the emerging scholarly ‘corporate turn’. Colombia's experience thus exposes both the potential and the structural limitations of integrating corporate accountability into post‑conflict justice.
DOI: 10.1111/jols.70078
Language: English
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,170
OpenAlex ID: W7204162411
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