INTRODUCTION

What is the function of law, or, more precisely, legal institutions, in response to historic injustice? A period of injustice and violence can be followed by an urge to forget what has happened or indeed specifically to remember it or alternatively to seek reconciliation and forgiveness. Sometimes the legal system takes it upon itself to forget, to remember or to forgive.

This article is based on the assumption that collective processes of forgetting, remembering and forgiving are related to societal efforts of structuring time in response to historic injustice. In the figure of remembering, the past is “relived”, whereas in the figure of forgetting the present is (temporarily) disconnected from its relationship with the past. In the figure of forgiving the relationship with the past is released, while the future is being anticipated.

Although these three collective figures, with their respective strong points and weaknesses, continue to play their roles as markers of historic changes, it will be argued that the specific role of legal institutions is primarily of a mundane, workaday nature. Legal institutions are well-equipped to keep some distance from the collective urges to forget, to forgive or to remember. On the one hand these bodies have to ensure that historical injustice is not ignored, while on the other hand they need to be able to take binding decisions on such injustice that will bring conflicts of the past to legal closure and will be accepted by those involved. By allowing people access to legal action, providing finite answers to injustice, a system of law can help counteract the possibility of historic injustice creating permanent victimhood.

This article is structured as follows. Firstly the relationship between the legal order and the collective duties to forget or to remember the past is discussed in sections 2 to 4. Secondly I examine the relationship between law and the collective duty to forgive in sections 5.1 to 5.4. The conclusion follows in section 6.