The Justice Facade : Trials of Transition in Cambodia

For survivors of the brutal Khmer Rouge Regime, western instruments of justice are small plasters on deep wounds. In Hinton's account of the subsequent international tribunal, only traditional ceremony, ritual, and unmediated dialogue can provide true healing.

What is Justice? Is it always just ''to come''? Can real experience be translated into law? Examining Cambodia''s troubled reconciliation, Alexander Hinton suggests an approach to justice founded on global ideals of the rule of law, democratization, and a progressive trajectory towards liberty and freedom, and which seeks to align the country with so called universal modes of thought, is condemned to failure. Instead, Hinton advocates focusing on the individual lived experience, and the discourses, interstices, and the combustive encounters connected with it, as a radical alternative.A phenomenology inspired approach towards healing national trauma, Hinton''s ground-breaking text will make anybody with an interest in transitional justice, development, humanitarian intervention, human rights, or peacebuilding, question the value of an established truth.