Writing Transitional Justice: An Empirical Evaluation of Transitional Justice Scholarship in Academic Journals

Abstract

This article examines transitional justice scholarship published in academic periodicals over a six-year period, 2003–2008, to identify the disciplines that contributed to the literature and the nature of scholarly questions they posed during a period of burgeoning scholarship. The article is the first to identify empirically which disciplines contributed to the scholarship and which were most influential among the social sciences and humanities. Law, political science, and sociology are the disciplines that dominated the field as reflected in academic journals. The most influential transitional justice articles in the social sciences and law suggested that readers were drawn to scholarly treatments that theorized the field or were analytical in nature. Scholars were wrestling with basic questions with regard to what transitional justice is and how it works. This historical perspective establishes a baseline from which to examine ongoing and future research and writing in transitional justice.