To Hell and Back (Utne reader no 92, p. 56)

Martha Minow: Between vengence and forgiveness

“When you’re dealing with the subtleties and complexities of human relationships, law is an extremely blunt instrument,” she explains. “Law can tell people to stop doing something. It can’t make people love each other, it can’t make people behave differently in a day-to-day way.”

”I worry that there is a false hope that law can solve the problem, when, at best, in many circumstances law can create a clearing, a space, where other kinds of difficult work at building human relationships can go forward.”

”There’s good reason to explore more ways in which our justice system can promote the possibility of apology and forgiveness or make more room for people to do that outside the justice system,” Minow says.

Ubuntu is an African concept Minow defines as “humaneness, or an inclusive sense of community valuing everyone.” In this sense of justice, no one can be human until all are human and the fragile bonds destroyed … are reconnected.

”Really terrible violence happens because people dehumanize other people,” she says. “And so how do you prevent that from happening? It has to work at a cognitive level, some sense that you just can’t do that to other people, that it could be you who gets dehumanized.”