Rethinking Amnesties and the Function of the Domestic Judge

Abstract

The award of amnesties or pardons has been used time and again to facilitate the attainment of peace after a civil war. However, this practice has been condemned by human rights and other international bodies as incompatible with the duty of states under human rights law to investigate, prosecute and punish human rights violations and the victims’ rights of access to justice and to the truth. Due to this incompatibility, the function of the domestic (constitutional) judge is none other than to strike down amnesty legislation as null and void. This appears to be the prevailing narrative in contemporary human rights discourse. The present contribution takes issue with this narrative. It takes the position that the international effect of regional human rights jurisprudencehas been to condition, as opposed to wholesale outlaw, the use of amnesties as a post-conflict peace-building tool. It defends the view that while blanket amnesties are increasingly considered incompatible with victims’ rights today, that does not mean that all amnesties are prohibited. From this perspective, this article argues that the proper function of domestic constitutional courts in the performance of the constitutionality control of amnesty legislation should take a different shape; instead of querying whether to strike down or to uphold amnesty legislation in its entirety, Constitutional Courts should condition amnesties to criteria – such as their position as part of a broader transitional justice package including truth telling and compensation – and monitor their implementation on a case-by-case basis.