Why are some human rights violations, but not others, criminalized in international law? How have countries responded to human rights violations? Why do people participate in mass atrocities and how have they been punished? How has human rights discourse influenced international and national criminal justice?
This course applies a sociological perspective to human rights discourse, efforts to criminalize human rights violations, and consequences of these efforts. To begin, we will analyze the construction of international human rights ideals, laws, and institutions since the mid 20th century and consider how human rights discourse is employed to frame particular acts as deviant and criminal law as an appropriate response. Second, we will analyze institutional responses to violations of international criminal law (i.e., transitional justice mechanisms), including prosecutions, truth commissions, and amnesties. To examine why and how state and non-state actors have opted to pursue transitional justice mechanisms, we will dig in to a variety of case histories, including the Holocaust, the Balkan wars, Rwanda, Darfur, South Africa, and Argentina. Here, we will also discuss the consequences of interventions for remembering past violence and preventing future violence.