Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law and Co-Director of the Center for International Law at New York Law School
To begin, I am grateful to the ICONnect Blog, to Mateo Merchán Duque, and to the scholars here for engaging with my most recent book, Presidential Visions of Transitional Justice: An American Legacy of Responsibility and Reconciliation (2025).
Presidential Visions of Transitional Justice origins go back to 2016, the last year of then President Obama’s second term –aiming to understand Obama’s site-conscious trips and related speeches around the world; the book then embarks on a journey in US history—to explore what might be seen as the legacy of Presidents in these transitional moments in the US and the world. In this interpretive project, I adopt a constructivist approach to law and international relations that focuses on the relevant actors and actions in these moments.
How should we understand Obama’s acknowledgment statements calling for a “reset”? My focus on the presidency and leadership more generally departs from a technocratic focus, which has for some time dominated the field. (See my critique in Globalizing Transitional Justice: Contemporary Essays, 2014) The development of the UN pillars has given rise to formulaic data-driven approaches to transitional justice, e.g., counting trials and truth commissions and the like, involving empirical measures of transitional justice, often a circular affair. Whereas this book focuses on the actors whose decisions shaped policy at crucial times, an interpretive project in peacemaking: what intentions were and the related reception here and abroad. This meant tracing a legacy in conflict resolution in law and politics.
The exploration of the Obama tour raised follow-on questions: to what extent were these actions unique? –or might there be a more longstanding Presidential legacy? While the Obama tour addressed past foreign affairs crises, there were other instances of leadership and vision at critical times in war and peacemaking. The interpretive project sought to understand these figures in their time and with the vantage point of knowing the reception of their actions as well as that of subsequent administrations.
The historical inquiry took me to the foundations of the republic and the diplomacy and treaty-making pursued by our first President in order to avoid a return to conflict shortly after the War of Independence. Crucially, Washington recognized the importance of crafting justice through the Jay treaty and related arbitral commissions to advance a durable peace. Here we see eschewal of false dichotomies; peace is not seen as in tension with justice, but rather inextricably enmeshed in and dependent on justice. While the commissions responded to claims by the US and Brits alike, the Jay Treaty would offer justice on a national plane and justify the future of the US as a nation, which would henceforth be seen as a reliable actor in the international community.
Other chapters take up similar pivotal moments reflecting the role of these leaders acting upon their own vision of the place of justice in sustainable peace. Each displaying presidentialist thinking, i.e., for the country as a whole and for the future. Here we see how American transitional justice is socially constructed- and often executive-led through the President as the preeminent actor in matters of war and peace.
Elie Tassel Maurizi’s post sees the potential in the Obama “apologetic gestures: and considers these in light of related actions taken by current French President Macron–a presidency that seems closest to the American in the European system. As is taken up in chapter six, there appears to be a surge in such gestures at the turn of the last century onwards. Like Obama, Macron appears to have taken it upon himself to address the legacy of colonialization in taking ownership, as it were, of the past. While Tassel—Maurizi observes that, in some cases, these presidential statements are preceded by judicial decisions or commission of inquiry, etc., others are propelled by personal remorse or other strategic considerations, while nonetheless involving leadership as well as assumption of responsibility.
Arnaud Kurze names these actions “ethical statecraft,” which seeks to capture their unique role in the work of presidential diplomacy and international relations. After all, the presidency poses the ambivalent power of “the dangers of exceptionalism and the possibilities of ethical self-limitation.” Kurze poses a challenge: “Can the same office that authorizes drones, sanctions, and secrecy also deliver contrition”? It depends —although not always in that order —and often many administrations later. Tensions emerge with Obama and his counterterror drone attacks, as well as with the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt at the turn of the century.
Daniel Quiroga’s post is a general critique of my Roosevelt chapter and the book’s project. Regrettably, his approach prevents him reading US history at the time – if he had– he would have understood the fallacy in thinking now inventing the pun of the “teddy bear’? Actually the” teddy bear” was in fact invented during the Roosevelt administration because of a story involving Roosevelt kindness to a bear on a conservation trip: when despite his being an avid hunter he surprised his entourage by drawing a line on shooting a captive bear giving rise to “teddy’s bear” ever since.
Source of the images: The Story of the Teddy Bear
The anachronism of thinking “teddy bear” originates from today’s “plushy” mass market wannabes is symptomatic. While Quiroga challenges me for putative monumental history, this isn’t that. Rather, the project is interpretive: my book situates these leaders in their historical context at the time of the Spanish Empire and the Spanish-American War to better understand their initiatives regarding conflict resolution. Rush to judgment from today’s international law lens obscures the context of the time and the prevailing continental approach of gunboat diplomacy, which was the hallmark of European states in the Americas. Here, we see the significance of the Rooseveltian turn to international arbitration as a move to change international enforcement—a transformation in international law which would take decades and be further consolidated by jurists from the Americas.
This interpretive project aims to understand these leaders in their time. Today’s vantage point allows us to see the consequences of their actions and to compare them with those of subsequent administrations (See Hayden White, The Practical Past, 2014). These were bold peacemakers in their time, each with a view of US interests in terms of the scope of the country as a whole, and also aimed at lasting settlements in the future, often with an impact on international law. This does not mean an endorsement of their actions nor the consequences that flowed from them.
Turning now to the comments regarding the book in the contemporary context. As the book was going to press, Obama’s second term ended in Trump, who had explicitly campaigned on his opposition to his predecessor’s presidential transitional justice–attacking Obama as weak and positioning himself against the “apology tour.” “America doesn’t apologize”. Trump’s exceptionalism is seen in his caricatured portrayal of the US as an unlimited, unrepentant power, and yet vividly positioned against this book’s counternarrative.
Notwithstanding campaign promises of isolationism, in a bewildering second term, Trump seems anxious to make his mark in the above legacy of executive-led war and peace. Here, the relevance of Tamar Hostovsky Brandes’s comments on the outsized implications of Trumpian foreign policy in the Middle East. Here we see up close the problem of the interaction of weak democracy, creeping authoritarianism, and international relations, with Trump’s ability to pressure an end to the Gaza campaign and to craft an innovative “Board of Peace” garnering some multilateral support; nevertheless, much remains non-transparent, and the peace is short-lived. This lack of transparency, of communication, is the theme of Maria Varaki’s comments, which present the question: What can we learn from the US legacy given today’s administration? She poses the juxtaposition of the Obama dialogues and the current administration, crushing “shallowness and actual silence of the leader’s words are deafening,” a deafening silence to which we must nonetheless attend, along with a call for a return to a bigger vision of peace and justice.
Suggested citation: Ruti Teitel, Symposium on Ruti Teitel’s Presidential Visions of Transitional Justice, Part VII: Reply, Int’l J. Const. L. Blog, Apr. 3, 2026, at: https://www.iconnectblog.com/symposium-on-ruti-teitels-presidential-visions-of-transitional-justice-part-7-reply/