Transitional Justice, Jus Post Bellum and International Criminal Law: Differentiating the Usages, History and Dynamics

This article argues that without an attempt to clarify the distinctions among transitional justice, jus post bellum and international criminal law, none of these concepts will reach its potential. If transitional justice is made so elastic as implicitly to absorb international criminal law and jus post bellum, this lessens the potential value of transitional justice as a discrete, focused practice. After providing an empirical analysis of the usage of the concepts and reviewing the historical foundations of the terms, the article analyses how each operates in practice over time. It then examines how the concepts could have been applied to work together in recent Cambodian history.