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Amnesties and Forgiveness

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Notes

  1. For a recent book-length philosophical treatment of this topic, see Colleen Murphy, The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

  2. Trudy Govier, Forgiveness and Revenge (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 107. Criminal prosecution and amnesty do not, however, exhaust the options in new democracies that have emerged from authoritarian regimes. A further possibility is neither to grant amnesty nor to prosecute and punish.

  3. Ruti Teitel, Transitional Justice (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 54.

  4. Amnesties are sometimes considered to be a form of pardon (Kathleen Dean Moore, Pardons: Justice, Mercy and the Public Interest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 80. Yet it is as well to distinguish amnesties and pardons, for amnesties confer immunity on their recipients against prosecution and punishment whereas pardons exempt offenders from punishment only. Furthermore, amnesties are bestowed in favour of classes or groups of offender whereas pardons tend to be granted on an individual, case-by-case basis.

  5. The amnesty granted in Athens in 403BCE is generally considered to be one of the first transitional amnesties in the ancient world. For a discussion, see Jon Elster, Closing the Books (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 3-17.

  6. Louise Mallinder and Kieran McEvoy, “Amnesties in Transition: Punishment, Restoration, and the Governance of Mercy”, Journal of Law and Society 39(3) (2012): 410-440, p. 411. For a discussion of a number of amnesties granted during the ‘third wave’ of democracy from 1974 to 1990, see Samuel Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman-London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), pp. 211-231. For a discussion of notable amnesties granted before and after 1990, see Renée Jeffery, Amnesties, Accountability and Human Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014).

  7. See Kathryn Sikkink, The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions Are Changing World Politics (New York: Norton, 2011).

  8. Jeffery, Amnesties, Accountability and Human Rights, p. 3.

  9. Carlos Santiago Nino, for example, observes in connection with 1980s Argentina that the insistence of human rights groups on the prosecution and punishment of “each and every person” responsible for human rights abuses was “intransigently retributive” in character (Carlos Santiago Nino, Radical Evil on Trial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 112).

  10. See, for example, Diane Orentlicher’s argument in support of criminal prosecution on the ground of its efficacy as a deterrent (Diane Orentlicher, “Settling Accounts: The Duty to Prosecute Human Rights Violations of a Prior Regime”, The Yale Law Journal 100(8) (1991): 2537-2615).

  11. Stephen J. Pope, “The Convergence of Forgiveness and Justice: Lessons from El Salvador”, Theological Studies 64(4) (2003): 812–835, p. 815.

  12. For the text of the Ugandan Amnesty Act, see <https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl-nat.nsf/0/7d2430f8f3cc16b6c125767e00493668/$file/ugandan+amnesty+act+2000.pdf> (accessed 12 March 2021).

  13. “Transparency Solomon Islands Criticises Proposed Bill”, Solomon Times, 27 July 2009, <https://www.solomontimes.com/news/transparency-solomon-islands-criticises-proposed-bill/4260> (accessed 12 March 2021).

  14. Henry Campbell Black, Joseph R. Nolan and Jacqueline M. Nolan, Black’s Law Dictionary, 6th edn. (Eagan: West Publishing, 1990), p. 82.

  15. See, for example, P.E. Digeser, Political Forgiveness (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 19; Larry May and Elizabeth Edenberg, “Introduction”, in Larry May and Elizabeth Edenberg (eds.), Jus Post Bellum and Transitional Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 1–25, p. 10, Carlos Santiago Nino, Radical Evil on Trial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), p. 164; Nicholas Wolterstorff, “Is It Permissible and Sometimes Desirable For States to Forgive?”, Journal of Religious Ethics 41(3) (2013): 417–434, pp. 417, 428–430; Alice MacLachlan, “The Philosophical Controversy Over Political Forgiveness” in Bas van Stokkom, Neelke Doorn and Paul Van Tongeren (eds.), Public Forgiveness in Post-conflict Contexts (Cambridge: Intersentia Press, 2012), pp. 37–64, 10; Martha Minow, Beyond Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History After Genocide and Mass Violence (Boston: Beacon Press 1998) 15–17; Wilhelm Verwoerd, Equity, Mercy, Forgiveness: Interpreting Amnesty Within the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Leuwen: Peeters, 2007), pp. 135–170.

  16. One commentator ruefully remarks that “when amnesty is misrepresented as forgiveness, rather than the strategic compromise it really is, this failure is passed off as a moral achievement” (Andrew Schaap, “Political Grounds For Forgiveness” Contemporary Political Theory 2(1) (2003) 77–87, p. 77).

  17. Wolterstorff, “Is It Permissible and Sometimes Desirable For States to Forgive?”, p. 430.

  18. As Hughes and Warmke observe, on some conceptions of forgiveness the conditions for an act of forgiveness’s having moral legitimacy “are built into the very constitutive conditions for forgiveness itself” so that forgiveness is always morally good (Paul Hughes and Brandon Warmke, “Forgiveness”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), (2017), URL=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/forgiveness/, §9.2). In these views, if amnesty amounts to forgiveness it will be at least morally permissible.

  19. Jeffrie Murphy, “Forgiveness and Resentment” in Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) 14–34, pp. 15–17; Charles Griswold, Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) p. xxiii; Margaret Urban Walker, Moral Repair: Reconstructing Moral Relations After Wrongdoing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 154; Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 237–41; Joanna North, “Wrongdoing and Forgiveness”, Philosophy 62 (242) (1987): 499–508, p. 503.

  20. Arendt, The Human Condition, pp. 237, 240.

  21. See Griswold, Forgiveness, p. 169 and Lucy Allais, “Wiping the Slate Clean: The Heart of Forgiveness” Philosophy and Public Affairs 36(1) (2008): 33–68.

  22. See Murphy, “Forgiveness and Resentment”, pp. 26–7; Jeffrie Murphy, Getting Even: Forgiveness and Its Limits (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 15; Claudia Card, The Atrocity Paradigm: A Theory of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 190; Griswold, Forgiveness, pp. xix, 137, 146, fn 9.

  23. Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson, “The Moral Foundations of Truth Commissions”, in Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson (eds.), Truth v Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 22–41, p. 31.

  24. See Leo Zaibert, “The Paradox of Forgiveness”, Journal of Moral Philosophy 6(3) (2009): 363–393, p. 368.

  25. Zaibert, “The Paradox of Forgiveness”, p. 392.

  26. For examples of the view that such a victim could not have forgiven, see David Londey, “Can God Forgive Us Our Trespasses?”, Sophia 25(2) (1986): 4–10, pp. 4–5; Pamela Hieronymi, “Articulating an Uncompromising Forgiveness”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62(3) (2001): 529–555, p. 551; Wolterstorff, “Is It Permissible and Sometimes Desirable For States to Forgive?”, p. 421.

  27. R.J. O’Shaughnessy, “Forgiveness”, Philosophy 42(162) (1967): 336–352, p. 338; Murphy “Forgiveness and Resentment”, pp. 21–22; Moore, Pardons, p. 185; Jean Hampton, “The Retributive Idea” in Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988): 111–161, pp. 157–158; Paul Hughes, “What is Involved in Forgiving?”, Journal of Value Inquiry 27 (3–4) (1993): 331–340, p. 337; Eve Garrard and David MacNaughton, “In Defence of Unconditional Forgiveness”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 103(1) (2002): 39–60, p. 148; Allais, “Wiping the Slate Clean”, p. 49; Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke, “Punishment and Forgiveness”, in Jonathan Jacobs and Jonathan Jackson (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Criminal Justice Ethics (London: Routledge, 2017) 203–215.

  28. Walker, Moral Repair, p. 156.

  29. Allais, “Wiping the Slate Clean”, p. 39, n. 16.

  30. A. John Simmons, “Locke and the Right to Punish”, Philosophy & Public Affairs 20(4) (1991): 311–349, p. 342.

  31. Digeser, Political Forgiveness. For other versions of political forgiveness, see Donald Shriver, An Ethic for Enemies: Forgiveness in Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) and Mark Amstutz, The Healing of Nations: The Promise and Limits of Political Forgiveness (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005).

  32. Digeser, Political Forgiveness, p. 20.

  33. Digeser, Political Forgiveness, pp. 55–57, 135.

  34. Digeser, Political Forgiveness, pp. 55–6. Pace Digeser, I incline to the view that amnesties not granted conditionally upon full disclosure by perpetrators, even if they could not qualify as political forgiveness as Digeser conceives of it, could count as forgiveness in a punishment-remission sense. I disagree with Digeser that the granting of an unconditional amnesty would perforce amount to forgetting. For one thing, an unconditional amnesty may be granted without any loss of memory of past wrongs. For another, forgetting “simply happens to us; that is, it is totally non-voluntary”, in Murphy’s words (Murphy, “Forgiveness and Resentment”, p. 23, emphasis in original). By contrast, unconditional amnesty is typically granted voluntarily and deliberately. While amnesty that is not conditional upon perpetrators’ full disclosure would do nothing to promote public acknowledgement of the truth about past human rights violations, that would not preclude its being forgiveness. I shall not pursue these points further here.

  35. P.E. Digeser, “Justice, Forgiveness, Mercy and Forgetting: The Complex Meaning of Executive Pardoning”, Capital University Law Review 31 (2003): 161–178, p. 167.

  36. Digeser, Political Forgiveness, p. 5.

  37. Digeser, Political Forgiveness, p. 71.

  38. Digeser, Political Forgiveness, p. 69.

  39. Digeser, Political Forgiveness, p. 70.

  40. Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 241.

  41. MacLachlan, “The Philosophical Controversy Over Political Forgiveness”, p. 60.

  42. Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 237.

  43. Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930–1954, J. Kohn (ed.) (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co, 1994), p. 308.

  44. Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 241.

  45. Digeser, Political Forgiveness, pp. 74–77, 139–145.

  46. Digeser, Political Forgiveness, p. 139.

  47. See, for example, Herbert Morris “Persons and Punishment”, The Monist 52(4) (1968): 475–501, 478; Richard Dagger, “Restitution, Punishment and Debts to Society”, in Joe Hudson and Burt Galaway (eds.), Victims, Offenders and Alternative Sanctions (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1980) 3–13; John Finnis, “Retribution: Punishment’s Formative Aim”, American Journal of Jurisprudence 44(1) (1999): 91–103, p. 99.

  48. See, for example, R.A. Duff, “The Intrusion of Mercy”, Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 4(2) (2007): 361–387, p. 386.

  49. Griswold, Forgiveness, p. 60.

  50. Griswold, Forgiveness, p. 61.

  51. For a discussion, see Brandon Warmke, “The Economic Model of Forgiveness”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 97(4) (2016): 570–589, pp. 579–580.

  52. Griswold, Forgiveness, p. 61.

  53. See, for example, Garrard and MacNaughton, “In Defence of Unconditional Forgiveness”.

  54. Griswold, Forgiveness, p. 61.

  55. See Warmke, “The Economic Model of Forgiveness”, pp. 581–2.

  56. For a discussion of and replies to certain other objections to the debt-remission view of forgiveness, see Warmke, “The Economic Model of Forgiveness”. Against political forgiveness specifically, it might be objected that the state lacks standing (or authority) to forgive perpetrators. For replies to this objection, see Digeser, Political Forgiveness, pp. 105–121 and Wolterstorff, “Is It Permissible and Sometimes Desirable For States to Forgive?”.

  57. Jeffrie Murphy, “The Case of Dostoyevsky’s General: Some Ruminations on Forgiving the Unforgiveable”, The Monist 92(4) (2009): 556–582, p. 573; Pope “The Convergence of Forgiveness and Justice”, pp. 820–1.

  58. Digeser, Political Forgiveness, pp. 20, 38.

  59. Digeser, Political Forgiveness, pp. 54.

  60. Christopher Bennett, “Is Amnesty a Collective Act of Forgiveness?”, Contemporary Political Theory 2 (2003): 67–76, p. 68. Bennett’s view owes much to Antony Duff’s justification for punishment, as he concedes. See, for example, R.A. Duff, “Restorative Justice and Punitive Restoration”, in Lode Walgrave (ed.), Restorative Justice and the Law (Collompton, Devon: Willan Publishing, 2002), 82–100. Bennett and Duff are retributivists, but the view that punishment is necessary for genuine reconciliation has been expressed by non-retributivists as well. See for example Thaddeus Metz, “Why Reconciliation Requires Punishment But Not Forgiveness”, in Krisanna Scheiter and Paula Satne (eds.), Conflict and Resolution: The Ethics of Forgiveness, Revenge and Punishment (Dordrecht: Springer, forthcoming).

  61. Jeremy Watkins, “Unilateral Forgiveness and the Task of Reconciliation”, Res Publica 21(1) (2015): 19–42, p. 29.

  62. Watkins, “Unilateral Forgiveness and the Task of Reconciliation”, p. 23.

  63. Watkins, “Unilateral Forgiveness and the Task of Reconciliation”, p. 28.

  64. Digeser, Political Forgiveness, p. 71. The view that trials are not inimical to reconciliation and can foster it is also expressed in Juan Mendez, “Accountability for Past Abuses”, Human Rights Quarterly 19(2) (1997): 255–282, pp. 273–4.

  65. Bruce Ackerman, The Future of Liberal Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press 1992), pp. 71, 98.

  66. Jack Goldsmith and Stephen D. Krasner, “The Limits of Idealism”, Daedalus 132(1) (2003): 47–63.

  67. Paul Collier, Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places (London: Vintage 2010), p. 6.

  68. Wolterstorff, “Is It Permissible and Sometimes Desirable For States to Forgive?”, p. 433. For further discussions of the contradictory and inconclusive nature of the evidence, see Freeman, Necessary Evils: Amnesties and the Search for Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009), p. 28 and Jeffery, Amnesties, Accountability and Human Rights, pp. 207–210.

  69. Jack Snyder and Leslie Vinjamurie, “Trials and Errors: Principle and Pragmatism in Strategies of International Justice”, International Security 28(3) (2003/2004): 5–44, pp. 15, 18, 43. Other studies which find that a well-timed amnesty can foster peace include Tricia D. Olsen, Leigh A. Payne and Andrew G. Reiter, Transitional Justice in Balance: Comparing Processes, Weighing Efficacy (Washington DC: US Institute of Peace, 2010), p. 34 and Geoff Dancy, “Deals with the Devil? Conflict Amnesties, Civil War, and Sustainable Peace”, International Organization 72 (2018): 387–421.

  70. Kathryn Sikkink and Carrie Booth Walling, “The Impact of Human Rights Trials in Latin America”. Journal of Peace Research. 44(4) (2007): 427–445, Hunjoon Kim and Kathryn Sikkink, “Explaining the Deterrence Effect of Human Rights Prosecutions for Transitional Countries”, International Studies Quarterly 54(4) (2010): 939–93, Tove Grete Lie, Helga Malmin Binningsbø and Scott Gates, “Post-conflict Justice and Sustainable Peace”, Post-conflict Transition Working Paper No. 5, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 4191 (2007): 1–24, pp. 15, 17 < http://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/245511468136802490/pdf/wps4191.pdf> (accessed 10 March 2021).

  71. Lie, Binningsbø and Gates, “Post-conflict Justice and Sustainable Peace”, pp. 15, 17.

  72. See Elizabeth Kiss, “Moral Ambition Within and Beyond Political Constraints: Reflections on Restorative Justice”, in Robert I. Rotberg and Dennis Thompson (eds.), Truth v. Justice: The Morality of Truth Commissions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 68–98, p. 71.

  73. See David Crocker, “Reckoning with Past Wrongs: A Normative Framework”, Ethics and International Affairs 13(1) (1999): 43–64, p. 51 and David Mendeloff, “Truth-seeking, Truth-telling, and Postconflict Peacebuilding: Curb the Enthusiasm?” International Studies Review 6 (2004): 335–380, pp. 356, 373.

  74. As Geoff Dancy states, “the consequentialist argument [for amnesties] has surprisingly little support. It remains unclear whether amnesties are effective” (Dancy, “Deals with the Devil?”, p. 389).

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    Patrick Lenta

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    Patrick Lenta

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Lenta, P. Amnesties and Forgiveness. J Value Inquiry 57, 277–294 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-021-09825-x

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