Overview

What is Justice? Is it always just 'to come'? Can real experience be translated into law? Examining Cambodia's troubled reconciliation, Alexander Hinton suggests an approach to justice founded on global ideals of the rule of law, democratization, and a progressive trajectory towards liberty and freedom, and which seeks to align the country with so called universal modes of thought, is condemned to failure. Instead, Hinton advocates focusing on the individual lived experience, and the discourses, interstices, and the combustive encounters connected with it, as a radical alternative.A phenomenology inspired approach towards healing national trauma, Hinton's ground-breaking text will make anybody with an interest in transitional justice, development, humanitarian intervention, human rights, or peacebuilding, question the value of an established truth.

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9780198820956

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Reviews

The Justice Facade is a ground-breaking book. Hinton provides a remarkable, closely observed study of transitional justice. Bringing his longstanding experience in post-genocide Cambodia to bear, he skilfully overturns much conventional wisdom about what it takes to come to terms with historic injustice. With this highly imaginative book, Hinton advances the study and practice of transitional justice in innumerable ways. The Justice Facade is essential reading for anyone intent on exporting the rule of law. * Jens Meierhentich, author of The Remnants of the Rechtsstaat: A Ethnography of Nazi Law * Behind the facade of the utopia of contemporary transitional justice, Alexander Laban Hinton finds a different set of personal realities. His extraordinary ethnography and phenomenology of the processes unleashed by Cambodias attempt to reckon with the genocidal past is the richest treatment of what transitional justice means as lived experience, beyond the familiar distractions of the promotional advertising and the liberal democratic teleology of the field. * Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World *

The Justice Facade is a ground-breaking book. Hinton provides a remarkable, closely observed study of transitional justice. Bringing his longstanding experience in post-genocide Cambodia to bear, he skilfully overturns much conventional wisdom about what it takes to come to terms with historic injustice. With this highly imaginative book, Hinton advances the study and practice of transitional justice in innumerable ways. The Justice Facade is essential reading for anyone intent on exporting the rule of law. * Jens Meierhenrich, author of The Remnants of the Rechtsstaat: A Ethnography of Nazi Law * Behind the facade of the utopia of contemporary transitional justice, Alexander Laban Hinton finds a different set of personal realities. His extraordinary ethnography and phenomenology of the processes unleashed by Cambodias attempt to reckon with the genocidal past is the richest treatment of what transitional justice means as lived experience, beyond the familiar distractions of the promotional advertising and the liberal democratic teleology of the field. * Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World * The concept of 'the justice facade', among others offered in the book, is very useful in describing the idealised imaginaries which alienate lived experiences on the ground ... Hinton asks readers to unpack their own transitional justice imaginaries and their facade-like renderings to consider more deeply the meanings and purposes of 'justice', 'peacebuilding' and transitional justice measures. This book is therefore a very welcome contribution to critical transitional justice studies. * Ebru Demir, LSE Review of Books blog *

there is much to ponder in this book ... Any students of transitional justice who see the Cambodian experience as a chapter in a larger, evolving volume will find much to advance their thinking. * James Jennings, The Mekong Review * The Justice Facade is a ground-breaking book. Hinton provides a remarkable, closely observed study of transitional justice. Bringing his longstanding experience in post-genocide Cambodia to bear, he skilfully overturns much conventional wisdom about what it takes to come to terms with historic injustice. With this highly imaginative book, Hinton advances the study and practice of transitional justice in innumerable ways. The Justice Facade is essential reading for anyone intent on exporting the rule of law. * Jens Meierhenrich, author of The Remnants of the Rechtsstaat: A Ethnography of Nazi Law * Behind the facade of the utopia of contemporary transitional justice, Alexander Laban Hinton finds a different set of personal realities. His extraordinary ethnography and phenomenology of the processes unleashed by Cambodias attempt to reckon with the genocidal past is the richest treatment of what transitional justice means as lived experience, beyond the familiar distractions of the promotional advertising and the liberal democratic teleology of the field. * Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World * The concept of 'the justice facade', among others offered in the book, is very useful in describing the idealised imaginaries which alienate lived experiences on the ground ... Hinton asks readers to unpack their own transitional justice imaginaries and their facade-like renderings to consider more deeply the meanings and purposes of 'justice', 'peacebuilding' and transitional justice measures. This book is therefore a very welcome contribution to critical transitional justice studies. * Ebru Demir, LSE Review of Books blog * [Hinton's] method and argument contributes to transitional justice - and particularly international criminal justice - scholarship and has implications for human rights, peacebuilding, and development studies in Cambodia. The Justice Facade is also compelling reading, with Hinton's attention toward lived experience offering a richly emotive and personalised account of the dynamic impact of the Democratic Kampuchea period. * Dr Emma Palmer, New Mandala *

The Justice Facade is a ground-breaking book. Hinton provides a remarkable, closely observed study of transitional justice. Bringing his longstanding experience in post-genocide Cambodia to bear, he skilfully overturns much conventional wisdom about what it takes to come to terms with historic injustice. With this highly imaginative book, Hinton advances the study and practice of transitional justice in innumerable ways. The Justice Facade is essential reading for anyone intent on exporting the rule of law. * Jens Meierhenrich, author of The Remnants of the Rechtsstaat: A Ethnography of Nazi Law * Behind the facade of the utopia of contemporary transitional justice, Alexander Laban Hinton finds a different set of personal realities. His extraordinary ethnography and phenomenology of the processes unleashed by Cambodias attempt to reckon with the genocidal past is the richest treatment of what transitional justice means as lived experience, beyond the familiar distractions of the promotional advertising and the liberal democratic teleology of the field. * Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World *

Author Information

Alexander Hinton is Founder and Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Professor of Anthropology, and UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention at Rutgers University. The American Anthropological Association selected Hinton as the recipient of the Robert B. Textor and Family Prize for Excellence in Anticipatory Anthropology. Hinton was listed as one of 'Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide' and is a past President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Hinton has received fellowships from a range of institutions and was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Most recently Hinton was a convener of the international ""Rethinking Peace Studies"" initiative and served as an expert witness at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.

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