| Abstract: | I argue that transitional justice should be democratised and to realise this goal I propose a method by which people can be enfranchised to make such choices. By showing that transitional justice options often involve trade-offs, I lay the groundwork for my democratic account of transitional justice. This article balances three democratic principles, including collective self-determination, the all affected interests principle and the protection of individual rights that are necessary to vote, to argue that victims and potential victims should constitute the transitional justice demos. I propose a new institution that would balance international and local control of transitional justice decision making, and choose the demos. This article does not attempt to construct a theory of how to resolve tensions in transitional justice decisions. Conversely, exactly because these tensions are often present, I develop a theory of who should be empowered to make transitional justice decisions and how their powers should be constrained. |
