Transitional Justice in the Nuclear Age: Addressing Past Legacies of Nuclear Use and Testing

The project in­vestigates legal and political efforts to address past injustices caused by nu­clear weapons. Both the use of nuclear weapons against the Japanese cities of Hiro­shima and Nagasaki in World War II and de­cades of nuclear testing and nuclear weapons produ­ction have caused grave and enduring human and environ­mental harm. Yet, states responsi­ble for this damage have yet to address these nuclear legacies in adequate ways. This pro­ject analyzes victims’ demands for nuclear justice, their legal and politi­cal struggles, as well as state policies and transna­tional and interna­tional norm dynamics relating to aspects of nuclear justice. We base our analysis on a frame­work that draws on the concept of “transitional justice” – coined origi­nally to discuss how so­cieties come to terms with legacies of autocra­tic government and civil war – and thus differs from conven­tional perspectives that conceive (in)justice in nuclear politics as re­ferring to the inequality be­tween nuclear “haves” and “have-nots”. The frame­work distinguishes four pillars of nuclear justice – accountabi­lity, redress, truth-seeking and non-recurrence – which have played different roles in struggles for nu­clear justice and have been addressed to different de­grees by national policies and interna­tional norms. 

In applying the frame­work to efforts to come to terms with past nuclear harm, the project pursues both an analytical and a norma­tive goal. 

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