Official Apologies and the Quest for Historical Justice
2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 6; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/14754830601098402
ISSN1475-4843
Autores Tópico(s)Global Peace and Security Dynamics
ResumoAbstract This article examines apologies that are offered on behalf of public bodies—nations, governments, or institutions—in response to historic wrongs. The context is the insufficiency of justice seeking in the world, and the unhealthy, sometimes long-moldering residue left behind by generations that have ignored great wrongs or failed to address them properly. Because of this insufficiency, the passage of time, and the inaccessibility of more conventional means for righting these wrongs, societies may need to find unconventional solutions in a continuing quest for justice. For historic wrongs, I argue in this essay, apologies are worth considering. Michael Marrus is the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Historical Society, he received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author, among other books, of The Politics of Assimilation: French Jews at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair, Vichy France and the Jews (with Robert Paxton), The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century, The Holocaust in History, Mr. Sam: The Life and Times of Samuel Bronfman, and The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1945–46. He was a member of the International Catholic–Jewish Historical Commission to examine the role of the Vatican during the Holocaust. Among the many who have assisted me in the preparation of this article, I would like particularly to thank Elazar Barkan, Richard Bilder, David Dyzenhaus, Roger Errera, Rhoda Howard-Hassmann, Alison Dundes Renteln, Mario Sznajder, and John Torpey. I am grateful as well to the Ford Foundation which supported a series of seminars on the subject of apologies I organized at the Munk Centre for International Studies of the University of Toronto during the academic year 2004–2005. Notes 1. Abbott Gleason, In response to "discredited beliefs," [Online]. Avalilable: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/kritika/v004/4.2gleason.html [31 May 2005]; Aaron Lazare (2004) On Apology (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 255–256. In a classic American film on the Indian Wars, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), John Wayne says, through his character, the crusty cavalry commander Captain Nathan Brittles: "Never apologize, mister, it's a sign of weakness." Calvin Weisberger (2003) Why do you do, what you do, when you do, what you do, Permanente Journal, 7 (Fall). [Online]. Available: http://xnet.kp.org/permanentejournal/fall03/why.html [17 June 2005]. One other example: The Canadian women's suffrage campaigner and activist, Nellie McClung perhaps best summed up the politician's bloody-mindedness on the matter: "Never retract, never explain, never apologize—get the thing done and let them howl." See Nellie McClung, Women's suffrage, and the person's case [Online]. Available: http://www.canadianstudies.ca/NewJapan/mcclungunit.html [26 March 2006]. 2. Marina Warner (n.d.) Sorry: The present state of apology, [Online]. Available: http://www.opendemocracy.org/debates/article-3-76-603.jsp [31 May 2005]. 3. Americans:2006 Americans apologise en masse for Bush victory. Mail & Guardian online, Thursday, November 11, 2004. [Online]. Available: http://sorryeverybody.com/, http://www.mg.co.za/Content/13.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Andinothernews&ao=125319 [10 November 2004]. When last checked (March 25, 2006), I noted a 256-page book collecting these apologies, Sorry Everybody: An Apology to the World for the Re-election of George W. Bush, selling for $12.71. 4. Jay Rayner (2004) The Apologist (London: Atlantic Books), pp. 237, 303, 354. See the satirical "Penitential News," on a Web site publicizing this book. [Online]. Available: http://www.the-apologist.co.uk/ [1 June 2005]. 5. Roy L. Brooks (ed.) (1999) When Sorry Isn't Enough: The Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice (New York: New York University Press); Janna Thompson (2002) Taking Responsibility for the Past: Reparation and Historical Justice (Cambridge: Polity Press); Elazar Barkan (2000) The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (New York: Norton); Lee Taft (2000) Apology subverted: The commodification of apology. Yale Law Journal, 109, 1135. For a feminist analysis, see Aviva Orenstein (1999) Apology excepted: Incorporating a feminist analysis into evidence policy where you would least expect. Southwestern University Law Review, 28, 222–278; and, for an impressive and sophisticated "game theoretic signaling model," see Benjamin Ho (2005) A theory of apologies, unpublished paper [Online]. Available: http://icf.yale.edu/pdf/whiteboxconf05/Ho.pdf [25 March 2006]. 6. Mark Gibney and Niklaus Steiner (2004) Apology and the "war on terror," unpublished paper, presented at the conference "The Age of Apology: The West Faces its Own Past," University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, October 21–24, 2004. 7. Lazare (2004: 6). Google, however uncertain as an arbiter, nevertheless confirms the point. When submitted to inquiry on March 25, 2006, "apologies" yields over forty-five million results. ("Globalization," to take a well-worn term, produces about 102 million.) And even with refinements, apologies do well: "public apologies" produces 16.7 million results, and "official apologies" generates just over 8.1 million. 8. For reasons of time and space I have not been able to give full enough attention to cross-cultural themes in apologies—something omitted in most discussions of this topic. On this issue, see the classic article by Hiroshi Wagatsuma and Arthur Rosett (1986) The implications of apology: Law and culture in Japan and the United States. Law and Society Review, 20, 461–496. I have also learned much from Alison Dundes Renteln, "Apologies: A cross-cultural analysis," lecture delivered at the University of Toronto, February 1, 2005. See also Lazare (2004: 31–34); Elite Olshtain (1989) Apologies across languages, in Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies, Shoshana Blum-Kulka, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kasper (eds.) (Norwood, NJ: Ablex), pp. 155–173; Leita Hickson (1986) The social contexts of apology in dispute settlement: A cross-cultural study, Ethnology, 25, 283–294; and Hang Zhang (2001) Culture and apology: The Hainan Island incident, World Englishes, 20, 383–391. 9. Martha Minow (1998) Between Vengeance and Forgiveness (Boston: Beacon Press), p. 114, drawing on Nicholas Tavuchis (1991) Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), p. 5. 10. On his last day as prime minister, Trudeau refused, apparently heatedly, a request that he apologize to Japanese Canadians for wartime removals and internments. "I cannot rewrite history," he said. "It is our purpose to be just in our time and that is what we have done in bringing in the Charter of Rights." Maryka Omatsu (1992) Bittersweet Passage: Redress and the Japanese Canadian Experience (Toronto: Between the Lines), p. 168. 11. See "Political apologies: Chronological list," [Online]. Available: http://reserve.mg2.org/apologies.htm [27 April 2005]; Trudy Govier and Wilhelm Verwoerd (2002) Taking wrongs seriously: A qualified defense of public apologies, Saskatchewan Law Review, 65, 140. 12. Jacob Weissberg (1998) Sorry excuse: Rules for national apologies, Slate, April 4 [Online]. Available: http://slate.misn.com/id/2309/ [24 April 2005]. 13. Elazar Barkan, "An age of apology?," lecture at the University of Toronto, March 17, 2005. 14. Luigi Accattoli (1997) Quando il Papa chiede perdono (Milan: Mondadori). 15. "Pope sends first e-mail apology," BBC News, November 23, 2001. [Online]. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/Europe/1671540.stm [1 June 2005]. 16. Peter Goodspeed (2005) "Japan: Always having to say sorry. National Post, April 23. For a rich collection of broad relevance, see Andrew Horvat and Gebhard Hielscher (eds.) (2003) Sharing the Burden of the Past: Legacies of War in Europe, America and Asia (Tokyo: The Asia Foundation and Friedrich-Ebert-Siftung). 17. Assembly of First Nations chief signs historic political accord to resolve the legacy of residential schools, May 30, 2005. [Online]. Available: http://www.afn.ca/article.asp?id=1185 [3June2005]. 18. Ken Killpatrick and Colin Freeze (2005) Red Cross pleads guilty, offers apology in blood scandal, Globe and Mail, May 31. 19. Tavuchis (1991:45 and passim). On the importance of the remedial see also Erving Goffman, (1971) Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order (New York: Basic Books) p. 113. 20. Quoted in Russell Daye (2004) Political Forgiveness: Lessons from South Africa (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books), pp. 60–61. 21. Daye (2004: 61). On the importance of context, see David A. Crocker (2003) Reckoning with past wrongs, in Dilemmas of Reconciliation: Cases and Concepts, Carol A. L. Prager and Trudy Govier (eds.) (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press), p. 57. 22. An example of the I'm-sorry-you-misunderstood-me failed apology, admittedly qualified by a partial admission of error by getting some facts wrong, is Newsweek's "Letter to Our Readers" of May 2005 about the alleged desecration of the Koran by American troops at Guantanamo Bay: "As most of you know, we have unequivocally retracted our story. In the light of the Pentagon's denials and our source's changing position on the allegation, the only responsible course was to say that we no longer stand by our story. We have also offered a sincere apology to our readers and especially to anyone affected by violence that may have been related to what we published. To the extent that our story played a role in contributing to such violence, we are deeply sorry. Let me assure both our readers and our staffers that NEWSWEEK remains every bit as committed to honest, independent and accurate reporting as we always have been. In this case, however, we got an important story wrong, and honor requires us to admit our mistake and redouble our efforts to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again. One of the frustrating aspects of our initial inquiry is that we seem to have taken so many appropriate steps in reporting the Guantanamo story. On the basis of what we know now, I've seen nothing to suggest that our people acted unethically or unprofessionally." MSNBC News. [Online]. Available: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7937042/site/newsweek/ [10 June 2005]. 23. Omatsu (1992: 100). In a reflection on the American government's similar apology to Japanese Americans, Representative Doris Matsui commented on its great significance for their families. "My father-in-law had the letter of apology, from the President of the United States, framed and hanging in his home. It was that important to members of their generation." Sheryl Gay Stolberg (2005). The Senate apologizes, mostly. New York Times, June 19. For a comparison of the Canadian and American experiences see John Torpey (2006) Making Whole What Has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), Ch. 3 (with Rosa Sevy). 24. Thompson (2002: xi). 25. Elisabeth Brumiller and Eric Schmitt (2004) Bush apologizes for Iraq abuse: Backs Rumsfeld, New York Times, May 7. It is unclear whether Bush understood his remarks as an apology, however. Asked about the matter in response to some television interviews with Bush a few days before, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, "The president is sorry for what occurred and the pain it has caused." When asked why Bush had not himself apologized, McClellan replied, "I'm saying it now for him." Terence Hunt (2004) Bush calls treatment of prisoners "abhorrent" in TV interviews Houston Chronicle, May 5. 26. Mark Rothschild, "No apology from Bush for abusive Troops," Anti war.Com [Online]. Available: http://www.antiwar.com/rothschild/?articleid=2489 (2 June 2005); Gibney and Steiner (2004). 27. Weissberg (1998). 28. Marina Warner (2002) Sorry, Open Democracy, November 7. [Online]. Available: http://www.opendemocracy.net/content/articles/pdf/603.pdf?redirect2=/debates/article-5-76-603.jsp [2 June 2005]. 29. For reasons having to do with the Soviet domination of Poland at the time, Warsaw's monument to the Ghetto Uprising of 1943 stood for much more, in Polish society, than the victimization of Jews. On the Kniefall see Willy Brandt (1994) Erinnerungen: "Mit den Notizen zum Fall G" (Berlin: Ullstein), p. 214; Jeffrey Herf (1997) Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 345. 30. "Willy Brandt's silent apology," Memory, History and Memorials, [online]. Available: http://www.facinghistorycampus.org/campus/memorials.nsf/0/DC396F572BD4D99F85256FA80055E9B1?OpenDocument [3 June 2006]. I know of no study of whether reminders of apologies can be excessive. Brandt's Kniefall could be a candidate. A looped film recording of his gesture plays continuously at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. John Borneman provides additional evidence: "In a book of 22 written testimonials to Brandt following his death, over half mention his Warsaw apology. … Many German secondary schools teach the apology as an integral event of self-definition. It frequently comes up on television talk shows, especially by members of the first postwar generation, the "68ers," who identify the apology as one of the few times they were actually proud of a German statesman, or by extension, were themselves proud to be German." John Borneman (1999) Can public apologies contribute to peace? An argument for retribution, unpublished paper [Online]. Available: http://condor.depaul.edu/∼rrotenbe/aeer/v17n1/borneman.pdf [30 May 2005]. 31. Tavuchis (1991:99). Sometimes interpersonal apologies can be presented as having "official" status—a seeming intention of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose architects had great hopes that such apologies might prove contagious and promote a kind of grass roots movement of political forgiveness. As Russell Daye observes, "The hearings of the commission … were set up so that interpersonal interactions were given a special place as moments of import in the transformation of the nation. Hearings in which a perpetrator or two faced a cluster of victims were given the status of a parable in the text of the nation's reconstitution." Daye describes his own reaction to witnessing such dramas as moving "back and forth between a feeling that I was witnessing a sacred ritual and disgust over the voyeurism of it all" (Daye 2004:70–71). 32. Tavuchis (1991:109). Rather than using the term "official apologies," which I find most helpful, Tavuchis refers to "collective apologetic speech." Tavuchis also makes the useful point that sorrow or sincerity, which play such an important role in interpersonal apologies, are much less important in official versions (1991: 117). 33. Alex Boraine (2004) Transitional justice as an emerging field, March 11 [Online]. Available: http://web.idrc.ca/uploads/user-S/10829975041revised-boraine-ottawa-2004.pdf [5 June 2005]. See also Ruti Teitel (2000) Transitional Justice (New York: Oxford University Press), p. 84. For a critical review of recent literature, see David Dyzenhaus (2003) "Review essay: Transitional justice, International Journal of Constitutional Law, I, 163–175. 34. Luis Roniger and Mario Sznajder (1999) The Legacy of Human-Rights Violations in the Southern Cone: Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 101. 35. Teitel (2000: 84). 36. Mark Osiel (1997) Mass Atrocity, Collective Memory, and the Law (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers) p. 277. 37. Thompson (2002:x); Barkan (2000). 38. Jon Elster (1990) Norms of revenge, Ethics, 100, 862–885. Often with historic wrongs fears that exposure to legal liability can impede the preferring of apologies even when there is a desire to do so. For a recent discussion of this problem and some strategies for dealing with it see Ombudsman of British Columbia (2006) The power of apology: Removing the legal barriers, Special Report No. 27 to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, February, 11–14. 39. Dinah Shelton (2003) The world of atonement: Reparations for historical injustices, Netherlands International Law Review, 50, 291. 40. P.E. Digester (2001) Political Forgiveness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), p. 53. 41. Notes for an address by the Honourable Jane Stewart, January 7, 1998 [Online]. Available: http://members.tripod.com/reonciliation/canada.htm [6 January 2005]. Learning from the Past: Statement of reconciliation. Read by the Honourable Jane Stewart, Minster of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, June 7, 1998, The Groundstate [Online]. Available: http://groundstate.ca/reconciliation [18 June 2005]. 42. Remarks by the President in apology for study done in Tuskegee, May 16, 1997 [Online]. Available: http://clinton4.nara.gov/textonly/new/remarks/fri/19970516-898html [5 June 2005]. See James H. Jones (1993) Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (New York: Free Press). 43. Martin C. Evans (2005) An apology for an old form of terror, http://newsday.com, June 12, [Online]. Available: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/nyuslynch124301400jun12,0,5622443.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines [13 June 2005]. For a full report, see also Avis Thomas-Lester (2005) Repairing the Senate's Record on Lynching, The Washington Post, June 11. 44. Charles Maier (1988) The Unmasterable Past: History, Holocaust, and German National Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), p. 161; Maier (1993), A surfeit of memory? Reflections on history, History & Memory, 5, 136–151. 45. Maier (1993:150). Maier speaks of a "great exhaustion of civic culture at the end of the second millennium of the Christian era. In that exhaustion, the salvageable political future reduces itself to ethnicity and perhaps ultimately even kinship." One result: "ethnic grievances have become the currency of politics," and "getting others to pay their respect is a version of national recognition. Respect must be paid, ambassadors must be exchanged, compensatory deals must be arranged, victims must be remembered. In the twilight of Enlightenment aspirations to collective institutions, we build museums to memory, our memory" (1993: 148–149). 46. Ian McEwan (2005) Saturday (Toronto: Knopf), p. 74. 47. John Torpey (2003:1–34) Introduction: Politics and the past; and Jeffrey K. Olick and Brenda Coughlin, (2003:38) The Politics of Regret: Analytic Frames, in Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices, John Torpey (ed). (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield). 48. Tiffany Jenkins considers how this trend is exemplified in memorial museums, often launched as explicit acts of atonement, and which she calls "cabinets of misery:" "Museums that document trauma and conflict have proliferated across the globe in the past decade, and more are planned …. This mania for memorial museums is a sign of a society with an unhealthy obsession. These new museums indicate a desire to elevate the worst aspects of mankind's history as a way of understanding humanity today." Tiffany Jenkins (1995) Memorial museums: Cabinets of misery, Spiked Culture, May 19 [Online]. Available: http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CAB4B.htm [11 June 2005]. 49. Barkan (2000: x, xvi–xvii). 50. Maier (1993:148). 51. John Torpey (2004) Paying for the past? The movement for reparations for African-Americans. Journal of Human Rights, 3, 171. 52. Louis Henkin (1990) The Age of Rights (New York: Columbia University Press). See also Govier and Verwoerd (2002: 161). 53. See Dinah Shelton (2004) Remedies in International Law, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 54. Dinah Shelton (2002) Righting wrongs: Reparations in the articles on state responsibility. American Journal of International Law, 96, 835. 55. Draft articles on Responsibility of States for internationally wrongful acts adopted by the International Law Commission at its fifty-third session (2001). [Online]. Available: http://www.un.org/law/ilc/texts/state_responsibility/responsibility_articles(e).pdf [5 June 2005]. 56. Lazare (2004:12). 57. Ariel Colonomos and John Torpey (2004) Introduction: World Civility? Journal of Human Rights, 3, 140. 58. Susan Dwyer (2003) Reconciliation for realists. In Dilemmas of Reconciliation, Carol A.L. Prager and Trudy Govier (eds.) (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press), p. 91. 59. Interview with Jacques Derrida (1999) Le siècle et le pardon, Le Monde des débats, December. [Online]. Available: http://www.hydra.umn.edu/derrida/siecle.html [7 June 2005]. 60. Tertio Millennio Adaveniente. [Online]. Available: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_iiletters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_1011 …, pgh 33 [11 June 2005]. 61. Incarnationis Mysterium. Bull of Indiction of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000. [Online]. Available: http://www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/docs/documents/hf_jp-iidoc_30111998_bolla-jubile …, pgh 11 [11 June 2005]. 62. International Theological Commission (1999) Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past, December. [Online]. Available: http://www.christlife.org/jubilee/essays/C_memoryandrec.html [11 June 2005]. 63. World: Europe French railways in Holocaust row, BBC News, January 12, 1999. [Online]. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/253201.stm [8 June 2005]. 64. Colonomos and Torpey (2004: 140). 65. Carrie J. Petrucci (2002) Apology in the criminal justice setting: Evidence for including apology as an additional component in the legal system. Behavioral Science Law, 20, 347–348, 351–352, 359. "The striking prevalence of therapeutic language in contemporary discussion of mass atrocity stands in contrast to contemporary debates fifty years ago." Minow (1998: 22). See also Mona Sue Weissmark (2004) Justice Matters: Legacies of the Holocaust and World War II (New York: Oxford University Press); Bruce W. Neckers, (2002) The art of the apology. Michigan Bar Journal, 81 (June), 10–11; Susan Bandes, (1999–2000) When victims seek closure: Forgiveness, vengeance and the role of government. Fordham Urban Law Journal, XXVII, 1599-1606. 66. Michael R. Marrus (2002) History and the Holocaust in the courtroom. In Lessons and Legacies IV: The Holocaust and Justice. Ronald Smelser (ed.) (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press), pp. 215–239; Osiel (1997). For an excellent presentation of a different view, see Lawrence Douglas (2001) The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press). See also Donald Bloxham (2001) Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 67. Michael Bazyler (2003) Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America's Courts (New York: New York University Press), p. 306. See also Stuart E. Eizenstat (2003) Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II (New York: Public Affairs); and Thomas Buergenthal (2004) International Law and the Holocaust, Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Annual Lecture, 28 October 2003 (Washington: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). 68. Quoted in Bazyler (2003: 328). 69. Nicolai Ouroussoff (2005) A forest of pillars, recalling the unimaginable, New York Times, May 9. 70. John Borneman (1997) Settling Accounts: Violence, Justice and Accountability in Postsocialist Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). 71. Alison Dundes Renteln (2005) Apologies: A cross-cultural analysis. Lecture delivered at the University of Toronto, February 1. 72. Terrence Hunt (2004) Rice defends Bush, offers no apologies. Portsmouth Herald, April 9. 73. Geoffrey Robertson (1999) Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice (rev. edn., New York: New Press), 97. 74. Tavuchis (1991:x). 75. Graham G. Dodds (2003) Political apologies and public discourse. In Public Discourse in America: Conversation and Community in the Twenty-First Century, Judith Rodin and Stephen P. Steinberg (eds.) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press), pp. 135–60. 76. See Cheryl Regehr and Thomas Gutheil (2002) Apology, justice, and trauma recovery, Journal of the Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 30, 425–430. 77. On magic and mystery see, for example, Tavuchis (1991:5); Minow (1998:114); and, Warner, "Sorry," 4. 78. Mark Osiel (1995) Ever again: Legal remembrance of Administrative massacre, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 144, 592. Often associated with the political right, such criticism has focused recently on Bill Clinton, who has been termed "a master of careful contrition" and who issued noteworthy official apologies for historic wrongs on several occasions. Clinton bashers in the United States Congress have seized upon this inclination to apologize as a demonstration of weakness of character or even of a lack of patriotic enthusiasm. In response to Clinton's 1998 expression of regret for American participation in the slave trade, for example, Republican Party Congressional Representative Tom DeLay said: "Here's a flower child with gray hairs, doing exactly what he did back in the 60s: he's apologizing for the actions of the United States." Sheryl Gay Stolberg (2005) The Senate apologizes, mostly. New York Times, June 19. 79. For a convenient discussion, see Wilhelm Verwoerd (2003) Toward a response to criticisms of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, In Dilemmas of Reconciliation, A.L. Prager and Trudy Govier (eds.) (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press), pp. 245–278. For a recent discussion of forgiveness particularly within the framework of Jewish traditions, see Solomon Schimmel (2002) Wounds Not Healed By Time: The Power of Repentance and Forgiveness (New York: Oxford University Press). 80. Tyler Cowen (2002) How far back should we go? Why restitution should be small unpublished paper, November 19 [Online]. Available: http://www.gmu.edu/jbc/Tyler/Restitution.pdf [30 May 2005]. 81. Daniel Szechi (n.d.) Apologizing for history, History News Service. [Online]. Available: http://www.h-net.org/∼hns/articles/2000/031800a.html [27 April 2005]. 82. Thompson (2002: 4). 83. Ibid, 35–36. Thompson thereby deals with the question of whether Tony Blair's apologies on the part of the British people for the Irish Potato Famine should bind, say, recent immigrants to the country. The answer is that British transgenerational responsibilities have nothing to do with ancestry. "To have a historical obligation, it is not necessary that you be a descendant of someone who made or violated an agreement. Nor does having an ancestor who fought against the injustice make you exempt…. You assume the responsibility when you become a citizen …." Ibid, 36. 84. Jeremy Waldron (1992) Superseding Historic Injustice. Ethics, 103, 5. 85. ICC president welcomes Danish apology for Thule relocation, September 30, 1999. [Online]. Available: http://www.nunatsiaq.com/archives/nunavut990930_12.html [6 February 2005]. 86. Germany admits Namibian genocide. BBC News, August 14, 2004. [Online]. Available: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3565938.stm [19 May 2005] Petros Kuteeue. Forgive us, says Germany. Namibian Local News [Online]. Available: http://www.namibian.com.na/2004/august/national/045D30AB16.html [19 May 2005]. On the limits of apologies in the Hereros' case, see Torpey (2006:141–142). 87. Yael Danieli (ed.) (1998) International Handbook of Multigenerational Legacies of Trauma (New York: Plenum Press). 88. George Sher (1980) Ancient wrongs and modern rights. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10, 3–17. 89. "If one person behaves unjustly, particularly in the context of a market, the injustice will have an effect not only on her immediate victim, but—via the price mechanism—on all those who trade in the market in question. Some will gain and some will lose as a result of the injustice, and any attempt at rectification—any attempt to implement the state of affairs that would have obtained but for the injustice—will involve interfering with those holdings as well" (Waldron 1992: 12). 90. Jeremy Waldron (1992) Historic injustice: Its remembrance and supercession. In Justice, Ethics and New Zealand Society, Graham Oddie and Roy W. Perrett (eds.) (Auckland: Oxford University Press), p. 155. 91. Waldron (1992). 92. Robert Nozick (1974) Anarchy, State and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 152–153. 93. Robert B. Weyeneth (2001) The power of apology and the process of historical reconciliation. The Public Historian, 23, 32. 94. Quoted in Primo Levi (1989) The Drowned and the Saved, trans. Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Vintage Books), pp. 11–12. 95. On the importance of dignity, see David Kretzmer and Eckhart Klein (2002) The Concept of Human Dignity in Human Rights Discourse (The Hague: Kluwer Law International). 96. Waldron (1992: 141–142). 97. Trudy Govier (2003) What is acknowledgement and why is it important? In Dilemmas of Reconciliation, A. L. Prager and Trudy Govier (eds.) (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press), p. 81. 98. Govier (2003: 84). 99. Derrida (1999: 9). 100. Minow (1998: 114) See also Martin P. Golding (1984–1985) Forgiveness and regret. Philosophical Forum, XVI, 132. 101. Thompson (2002: 47–48). 102. David A. Crocker (2003) Reckoning with past wrongs: A normative framework. In Dilemmas of Reconciliation, A. L. Prager and Trudy Govier (eds.) (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press), p. 54. 103. Roy F. Baumeister, Julie Juola Exline, and Kristen L. Sommer (1999) The victim role, grudge theory, and two dimensions of forgiveness. In Dimensions of Forgiveness: Psychological Research and Theological Perspectives, Evelyn L. Worthington, Jr. (ed.) (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press), pp. 79–104. 104. Thompson (2002: 52–53). 105. Renteln (2005: 9). 106. See Valérie-Barbara Rosoux (2001) Les Usages de la Mémoire dans les relations internationales: Le recours au passé dans la politique étrangère de la France à légard de l'Allemagne et de l'Algérie, de 1962 à nos jours (Brussels: Etablissements Emile Bruylant), p. 323, about the value of "le récit polycentrique." 107. Dwyer (2003: 96, 100–109). To this reader, at least, Dwyer's conclusions do sound rather like second-best, even if inescapable: "Reconciliation … will be a morally second-best option only if there is some other strategy a nation could undertake that would be better. For example, if justice, in the sense of fair and comprehensive trials and punishment, could be effected, reconciliation will rightly be judged morally inferior. But, the availability of realistic alternatives is precisely what is in question in most of the situations in which reconciliation is being recommended. Whether the establishment of truth commissions and efforts at reconciliation are morally inferior responses to violent pasts depends on the availability of other morally acceptable options. Where no such options exist, calls for reconciliation need not be impugned" (2003: 107–108). "Need not be impugned"—agreed. Still, they might be considered "second best." 108. Valérie-Barbara Rosoux (1998) Le Pardon: fait moral ou stratégie politique. Studia diplomatica, LI, 111. 109. See Adam Jaworski (1994) Apologies and non-apologies: Negotiation in speech act realization. Text, 14, 1187; Lazare (2004: 204) Shelton (2003: 302). 110. Trudy Govier and Wilhelm Verwoerd (2002) Trust and the problem of national reconciliation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 32, 199. 111. Richard Bilder [n.d.] The role of apology in international law. Unpublished paper, unpublished paper, presented at the conference "The Age of Apology: The West Faces its Own Past," University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 21–24 October 2004, 18. 112. Tavuchis (1991: 13). 113. Mark Gibney and Erik Roxtrom (2001) The status of state apologies. Human Rights Quarterly, 23, 923. 114. Robert Weyeneth (1998) Power of apology. Vancouver Sun, November 25, 33. 115. House of Commons Debates, September 22, 1988, 19499, quoted in Susan Alter (1999) Apologising for serious wrongdoing: Social, psychological and legal considerations. Final Report for the Law Commission of Canada, May, 9. 116. Preface to Minow (1998: ix).
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