The Inner and Outer Limits of Gendered Transitional Justice
This article addresses the contemporary boundaries of the transitional-justice field with a particular focus on the limits of gender justice. These limits are important to confront squarely as Ireland considers the adoption of transitional-justice mechanisms to face its painful past of systematic institutional abuse. I address the issues in transitional justice outlined above as they impinge on the experiences of gender harm. The starting premise offered below holds that despite scholarly, policy, and political attention, gender justice has been given only limited attention in what might be regarded as traditional transitional-justice contexts, with little consistency in application or outcomes. This makes the extended application of transitional-justice theory and practice beyond its core domain a haphazard enterprise—one that lacks solid and sustained jurisprudence, normative content, and precedent to guide it. In this context, advocating for a transitional-justice mechanism to address historic institutional abuse in Ireland demands attention to the foundations and scaffolding of transitional justice, and wariness of overconfidence regarding what justice can actually be achieved in practice.
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