General Course Information
1.1 Course details
| Course code: | LLAW63339 / JDOC6339 |
| Course name: | Transitional Justice |
| Programme offered under: | LLM Programme / JD Programme |
| Semester: | Second |
| Prerequisites / Co-requisites: | No |
| Credit point value: | 9 credit / 6 credits |
1.2 Course description
How might societies live together in the aftermath of violent conflict? Can international law, particularly human rights and its institutions contribute to repairing the quality of state-society relations once violent conflict is over? In the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War, international lawyers, researchers and organizations developed a new approach to these questions. This new approach is now called ‘Transitional Justice’. The novel contribution of Transitional Justice has been its specific focus on providing states with the legal and institution-building expertise to address the social, legal, political and moral/ethical consequences of violent conflict, and to prevent its return. Examples of Transitional Justice initiatives are Truth Commissions, human rights and rule-of-law programs, museums of memory, national remembrance days, sites of memorialization, reparation programs, artistic practices of collective memory, as well as the reform or creation of laws and legal institutions. The increasing importance of Transitional Justice is such that it is now not only a key pillar to achieve Goal 16 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, on peace, justice and strong institutions, but it is also a core component in international rule-of-law and development programs.
This course will equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand, analyze, and critique the role of international law, particularly human rights, in Transitional Justice. The course is designed for post-graduate law students who wish to engage with this interdisciplinary field of research and practice. To achieve this, the course will train students to identify and examine the role that international law plays in the practice and research of Transitional Justice, focusing on how the field responds to the ‘non-legal’ challenges that post-conflict states face (eg, questions of post-conflict ethics, reconciliation and forgiveness, political community after atrocity, memorialization, socio-economic reparations, and truth-telling).
The course will bring traditional as well as emerging Transitional Justice themes into conversation with international law and human rights, covering four main areas:
- historical and conceptual foundations of Transitional Justice, with a specific focus on its origins in parallel with the international prominence of human rights in the 1990s (especially in Argentina and Chile);
- signature Transitional Justice initiatives, including the role of Truth Commissions and amnesties in landmark case studies (eg, South Africa, Sri Lanka);
- contemporary debates on the contributions and limitations of Transitional Justice (eg, Iraq after the 2003 invasion);
- new legal challenges for Transitional Justice (eg, reparation claims for climate change or for the legacies of colonialism).
1.3 Course teachers
| Name | E-mail address | Office | Consultation | |
| Course convenor | Valeria VAZQUEZ GUEVARA | vvg1@hku.hk | CCT 604 | Thursdays by appointment |
1.4 Course outline (for elective course)
| Please click the link here for course outline (HKU Portal login required). |
Learning Outcomes
2.1 Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) for this course
CLO 1 understand and explain past and ongoing legal debates advancing or challenging the role of international law and human rights in the field of Transitional Justice;
CLO 2 conduct theoretically-driven yet empirically grounded legal analysis of the potential and limitations of international human rights law in Transitional Justice;
CLO 3 critically examine how the different legal systems and legal traditions of post-conflict contexts might respond to international human rights law and Transitional Justice;
CLO 4 apply legal skills with respect to, and awareness of, the world’s existing legal, cultural, and socio-political plurality;
CLO 5 communicate legal arguments and professionally engage with counter-arguments.
2.2 LLM and JD Programme Learning Outcomes (PLOs)
Please refer to the following link:
LLM – https://course.law.hku.hk/llm-plo/
JD – https://course.law.hku.hk/jd-plo/
2.3 Programme Learning Outcomes to be achieved in this course
| PLO A | PLO B | PLO C | PLO D | PLO E | PLO F | |
| CLO 1 | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| CLO 2 | ✓ | |||||
| CLO 3 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| CLO 4 | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
| CLO 5 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Assessment(s)
3.1 Assessment Summary
| Assessment task | Weighting | Feedback method* | Course learning outcomes |
| Class participation | 15% | 5 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
| Mid-term assignment | 40% | 2 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
| Final assignment | 45% | 2 | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 |
| *Feedback method (to be determined by course teacher) | |
| 1 | A general course report to be disseminated through Moodle |
| 2 | Individual feedback to be disseminated by email / through Moodle |
| 3 | Individual review meeting upon appointment |
| 4 | Group review meeting |
| 5 | In-class verbal feedback |
3.2 Assessment Detail
To be advised by course convenor(s). See also Course Outline above.
3.3 Grading Criteria
Please refer to the following link: https://www.law.hku.hk/_files/law_programme_grade_descriptors.pdf
Learning Activities
4.1 Learning Activity Plan
| Seminar: | 3 hours / week for 12 teaching weeks |
| Private study time: | 9.5 hours / week for 12 teaching weeks |
Remarks: the normative student study load per credit unit is 25 ± 5 hours (ie. 150 ± 30 hours for a 6-credit course), which includes all learning activities and experiences within and outside of classroom, and any assessment task and examinations and associated preparations.
4.2 Details of Learning Activities
To be advised by course convenor(s).
Learning Resources
5.1 Resources
| Reading materials: | Reading materials are posted on Moodle |
| Core reading list: | TBA |
| Recommended reading list: | TBA |
5.2 Links
Please refer to the following link: http://www.law.hku.hk/course/learning-resources/