Professor Colleen Murphy's latest book, The Conceptual Foundations of Transitional Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2017), has been reviewed in two separate philosophy journals.
In a review for Criminal Law and Philosophy, Catherine Lu (McGill University) writes, "Colleen Murphy’s book is an exemplary work in moral philosophy that lucidly answers some major normative and theoretical controversies surrounding the field of ‘transitional justice.’ Some of the challenges that Murphy tackles include the following: is ‘transitional justice’ a distinct kind of justice? What kinds of wrongdoing or injustice are important for a theory of transitional justice to address? Should democratization be the defining aim of transitional justice? Murphy’s accessible and engaging book provides a normatively clear and philosophically rigorous theory of transitional justice that is a valuable contribution to a burgeoning literature on a complex moral and political subject. Even if one is unconvinced by aspects of Mur-phy’s theory, its clarity helps to illuminate where future philosophical work on this complex theme should go."
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In another review for Ethics, the leading journal in moral and legal philosophy, Nir Eisikovits (University of Massachusetts-Boston) writes, "Colleen Murphy’s new book on transitional justice displays her signature blend of analytic rigor, elegant writing, and empirically anchored theorizing. She follows up her excellent first book on political reconciliation with a volume on what it means to transform a war-torn society so that it can, ultimately, become reconciled. The just pursuit of political transformation, Murphy argues, is at the heart of the idea of transitional justice. This is the best, most ambitious philosophical account of transitional justice that I know of. The book can be read with utility by scholars and students seeking to understand the unique conditions and dilemmas surrounding transitions, as well as by policy makers interested in fashioning decent and legitimate transitional institutions."
Read the full review.