Overview

Values, politics and law are inextricably intertwined in a communal effort to ensure respect for the human dignity of all the individuals in a society. This sentiment is often expressed, but rearely understood in the context of legal analysis. Proponents of sociolegal analysis often focus on particular actors or particular processes giving little attention to the communal aspects of justice. Because of this political entities in particular have been able to avoid responsibility for their past offenses to the human dignity of the communities who had invested them with the trust of government. Dr. Aurora Voiculescu's addresses this problem by examining the responsibility of collective political actors for human rights abuses. Instead of rehashing the developments within the sphere of individual and state responsibility, Dr. Voiculescu breaks new ground by considering communal needs for the responsibility of political collectives. At the centre of her work is the responsibility of the nomenklatura and what this means for societies over which they reigned. Drawing upon examples from the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe she analyzes the need for justice and ways in which this need must be met. In doing so she fluently shifts from politics to law to concerns for social justice. Her skilful analysis of legal and political concerns is done in a fashion that allows both lawyers and political actors to relate to the central problem of addressing past injustices that are imbedded in social relationships. The originality of Dr. Voiculescu's arguments makes this work valuable not only as an analysis of past events and strategies, but also as study a that breaks through barriers that have stifled the development of more effective forms of social justice. She goes beyond traditional legal institutions into the realm of truth commissions and other social institutions tasked with providing social justice. She also links her analysis of procedures with the values that underlie them, thereby providing valuable insights into how we might proceed towards developing effective means for ensuring collective responsibility. As the maiden work of one of Europe's most promising social legal thinkers, this work commands attcontion from all those who are interested in ensuring the collective responsibility of political actors for offences to the human dignity of their communities. It is a substantial contribution to the field on international human rights law with unique value for those who seek to understand the relationship between value, politics and law.

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