- Promotor
- Promotor
- Date
- Friday 20 May 2022, 10:30 - 12:00
- Type
- PhD defence
- Space
- Senate Hall
- Building
- Erasmus Building
- Location
- Campus Woudestein
On 20 May 2022, E. Muhammad will defend her PhD dissertation, entitled: ‘Transitional Justice as a Post-Revolution Constitutional Arrangement: A Law and Economics Approach’.
Dissertation in short:
This dissertation addresses the timely questions of transitional justice (TJ) in the aftermath of revolutions against autocratic regimes, dealing with TJ as a constitutional arrangement through the lenses of constitutional economics.
After an introductory chapter, chapter 2 deals with why nations rarely adopt meaningful TJ processes in the first place, it then explains the limitations of civil society as the arbiter, facilitator, and enforcer of TJ policies. Chapter 3 tackles the question of which mechanisms to choose? It uses the UN Guidelines on TJ that sets five principal TJ mechanisms. It provides a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of each mechanism and suggests policy implications accordingly. The CBA inspires chapter 4 analysis, suggesting a tradeoff between restrictive fair trial standards under constitutional laws and justice considerations. The tradeoff explains the suggested efficiency of the balanced TJ approaches that combine trials and amnesties.
This approach is used for the case study analysis of TJ in Tunisia after the 2011 revolution in chapter 5. The chapter presents the first index of TJ mechanisms in Tunisia through novel data collected by the author. It shows an ultimate TJ design that ended with a modest harvest in the application. The lack of cooperation between the Tunisian parties, added to the absence of transparency in many TJ measures, threatens any possible positive outcomes of the partial TJ process. It is also alarming regarding constitutional compliance in a system that – until recently - was considered the only democracy in the Arab region. Chapter 6 is a summary.
- More information
The public defence will begin exactly at 10.30 hrs. The doors will be closed once the public defence starts, latecomers may be able to watch on the screen outside. There is no possibility of entrance during the first part of the ceremony. Due to the solemn nature of the ceremony, we recommend that you do not take children under the age of 6 to the first part of the ceremony.
A live stream link has been provided to the candidate.