Source: (2003) Columbia Law Review. 104:730-767.
Truth commissions and trials are now operating concurrently as mechanisms
of transitional justice in settings as diverse as Peru, East Timor, and
Sierra Leone. While truth commissions and trials play complementary roles
in transitional justice, their concurrent operation also raises novel issues of
coordination. Where left unresolved, these coordination issues—including
information and resource sharing, handling of evidence and witnesses, and
sequencing of investigations and outcomes—threaten to undermine individual
mandates and the overall goals of transitional justice. Drawing on a
case study of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Special Court
in Sierra Leone, this Note proposes a loose framework for making coordination
decisions, which identifies context-specific transitional justice goals and
then seeks out the arrangements that best achieve those goals. This totality-ofthe-
circumstances approach allows the specific characteristics of each transitioning
society to shape coordination, while recognizing the common needs of
justice, accountability, and reconciliation to which transitional justice
responds. (author’s abstract).
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