ESSAY
Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Feminist Responses to Violent Injustice*
Martha Minow**
Introduction
I am especially honored by the chance to speak in this series dedicated to Anna Hirsch. I have heard her described as a woman who persevered against the odds, and I am honored to participate in celebrating her and her example.
I remember when Mary Joe Frug participated in the creation of this lectureship. Mary Joe, my dear friend, introduced me to my future husband, to passionate legal scholarship, and to the four basic food groups--salad, bread, wine, and chocolate. A current project of my own is in a way triggered by her death.
I am embarked on a hard study of social responses to mass atrocity. How should South Africa deal with the past and continuing legacies of Apartheid? What responses can be framed for the 120,000 murders in Bosnia, and genocide in Rwanda, killing between 500,000 and one million adults and children during a four month period in 1994? What do prosecutions for human rights violations offer? What, in contrast, might be afforded by a commission of inquiry, such as the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission? When are reparations and restitution constructive and effective responses? When are artistic memorials, literature, and theatrical productions the kinds of responses most deserving of support? It is impossible not to consider similar questions about any individual atrocity, like a brutal murder of a vibrant red-haired law profesor. Does our inability to catch someone to prosecute prevent the only or even best social response? What responses might better keep alive the individual's work and spirit, or help repair the damage to the chains of friendship and professional and political work broken by the murder?
Today, with you who attend what was once the Portia Law School, and what has always been a place of law that takes women seriously, I want to ask, is there, or should there be, a particular feminist take on these issues? There need not be one; certainly these are human issues of concern to all human beings. Yet there is a striking tension in possible responses, and I wonder whether the work of feminist scholars and activists mirrors that tension, or helps to resolve it--or both. From one side of the tension, there is call for extending and deepening legal forms of response, with adversarial lawsuits as the paradigm. From the other side are voices urging alternative responses, often called restorative justice, with apologies and reconciliation, rebuilding relationships between victims and offenders, as the paradigm. Where are and should feminists be in this tension, and how, if at all, should the tension be resolved in particular settings? I am interested in this question both as a feminist, disappointed by the limited set of subjects addressed by feminist work, and as a scholar searching for thoughtful responses to violent atrocities. After sketching the two contrasting responses as they appear, I will identify contemporary illustrations and analyses offered by feminist responses to violent injustices. My comments are unavoidably incomplete, and most basically aim at prompting more talk about these matters.
Punishment Versus Reconciliation
In the world of international human rights, the development of a litigation framework marks for many the proud accomplishment of the past and the aspiration for the future. Thus, the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials following World War II stand as the important human rights innovations. The current efforts to prosecute individuals for crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda revitalize and extend the earlier experiment in ways that move the world ahead on the course toward articulate and enforceable human rights. Domestic trials brought against former Nazis, such as Klaus Barbie and Adolf Eichmann, futher implement the vision of human rights, enforced by law. Similar triumphs are trials against those who authored and implemented the Dirty War in Argentina, the tyrannies of Eastern Europe, and torturers around the world.
What these trials do is apply to atrocities the crucial elements of a rule of law. Accountability for wrongdoing, public fact-finding in a setting marked by fairness and restraint, and certain and unbending punishment exacted by the state after full process, translate the desires for vengeance and redress into lawful, official action. Public trials can also provide occasions to educate, to set the record straight, to prevent social amnesia or denial about what happened, and, ideally, to deter future atrocities.
A contrasting vision calls for restorative justice.(1) It is less familiar and less institutionalized than the retributive approach. Its advocates view the adversarial trial as failing to focus adequately on victims and the task of repairing harms. Restorative justice emphasizes the humanity of both offender and victim, and repair of social connections and peace as more important than retribution.(2) Some of its supporters draw explicitly on feminist work. Feminist conceptions of power with others, rather than power over others, inform some ideas about restorative justice.(3) But its prime advocates have not been women or people who claim to work in feminist traditions. Under restorative justice, repairing relationships between offenders and victims and within the community take precedence over law enforcement.(4) Forgiveness and reconciliation are central aspirations. Also elevated are the goals of healing individuals, human relationships, and even entire societies.
One reason to pursue these aspirations is pragmatic and psychological. Retributive approaches may reinforce anger and a sense of victimhood; reparative approaches instead can help victims move beyond anger and beyond a sense of powerlessness. Reparative or restorative justice can secure public acknowledgment and condemnation of the wrong, although through mechanisms that differ from prosecution, conviction, and punishment of wrongdoers. Restorative justice can also afford victims the position of relative power represented by the capacity to forgive--whether or not the individual victims proceed then to forgive particular perpetrators. Where victims do forgive, it is as much for their own healing and embrace of a future without rage as it is for the benefit of the offender.(5)
Father Michael Lapsley, who lost both hands and an eye to a letter bomb sent by Apartheid forces, explains that:
I realized that if I became filled with hatred, bitterness, self-pity and desire for revenge, I would remain a victim for ever. It would consume me. It would eat me alive . . . I am no longer a victim, nor even simply a survivor, I am a victor over evil, hatred and death.(6)
Seeking re-acceptance of the wrongdoers in society, restorative justice tries to build on the offenders' capacities for accountability, understanding, and prevention of future offenses.(7) Finally, reparative justice efforts seek to break the cycles of violence that in some ways are perpetuated when the state itself authorizes violent responses to violence, as in the death penalty.
In the context of international human rights, this approach infuses the current South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Charged with gathering testimony from victims, the TRC also has the capacity to grant amnesty to those who committed violence under Apartheid if they testify fully and if their offenses had a political purpose. The TRC proceeds on the hope that getting a full account of what happened and according it public acknowledgment can lay the foundations for a new, reconciling nation, rather than disturb the start of a new society with shock waves of revenge and divisiveness. In describing the TRC, Archbishop Desmond Tutu explained that, "Our nation needs healing. Victims and survivors who bore the brunt of the apartheid system need healing. Perpetrators are, in their own way, victims of the apartheid system and they, too, need healing."(8) The TRC seeks to promote healing by seeking a cathartic process of truth-telling and public acknowledgment of the human rights violations under Apartheid.(9)
Efforts for reparations and apologies for atrocities similarly focus on healing and restoration.(10) In the United States, restorative justice discussions have largely focused on juvenile crime and mediation of disputes, including mediation of criminal offenses, and on specific governmental grants of reparations or apology. Campaigns for reparations for the 60,000 Japanese-Americans interned in United States camps during World War II similarly, in 1988, successfully secured governmental apology and symbolic monetary payments as efforts to repair individual and social damage. The state of Florida authorized reparations in 1994 for the survivors and descendants of the town of Rosewood, Florida, an African-American town destroyed in 1923 in a racially motivated incident with the knowledge of government officials.(11) The legislative effort, news coverage, and documentary movies surrounding the event helped to restore the memory of the incident and the individuals affected by it after decades of silence and suppression.(12)
In May, 1997, President Clinton offered an apology to survivors of the U.S. Public Health Service forty year study denying proven medical treatment to a group of African-American men with syphilis.(13) The study had sought to document the course of the untreated disease; the President acknowledged that the government's behavior was "clearly racist."(14) In that act of public contrition, Clinton sought to begin to restore the faith of the the survivors and other observers in the government and in medicine.(15)
Other recent public apologies included: "British Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized for his country's role in the Irish potato famine of 1845-1851"; Australia instituted a "Sorry Day" in response to its government's long-standing policy of stealing "Aborigine children from their parents to be raised by white families and orphanages"; "Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama apologized . . . for suffering inflicted in World War II"; "East German lawmakers apologized . . . for the Holocaust," after their government had denied responsibility for decades; and Pope John Paul II apologized for violence during the Counter-Reformation.(16) These public apologies, reparations, and efforts to mediate conflicts are all part of a growing interest in reconciliation and forgiveness in the context of political and interpersonal violence.(17)
Feminists on Both Sides
There is no general feminist theory for responding to violence; indeed, there apparently is no general feminist response to criminal justice, international law, or even domestic violence issues. Many feminists resist the very idea of "general" or "grand theories" as inevitably partial, while risking the pretense of universality. Instead, many feminists stress the importance of attentiveness to particularity and context, even while highlighting a larger pattern of unequal power and respect on the basis of traits such as gender, race, and class.(18)
There is a troubling pattern in the "particulars" that guide feminist approaches to violence and, especially, to criminal justice. To put it bluntly, feminists have pushed for greater retribution, including criminal prosecutions, for violence done to women, and more caring, empathic responses to women who risk criminal charges for their own conduct. This pattern smacks not only of inconsistency, but also of unreflective desires simply to advance what is good for women. Even if that were the only criterion, more general reflections would be required because of the basic feminist insight into the variety of women's positions and interests. Some women are the mothers, daughters, or sisters of men facing retributive justice, even as some women are the victims of male violence; some women are the victims of other women's violence. A feminist approach to atrocities requires some effort to think across circumstances, even while specifying the kinds of particularities that could or should matter in a sensitive set of responses. There are in fact germs of more general ideas in feminist work, and these ideas support both the prosecutorial, punishment response to violence and the restorative, reparations approach. Drawing them out more explicitly may make conflicts between the two approaches more stark, but this is a first step in a process of broader reflection on a useful set of ideas on the subject of responses to atrocity.
Thus, it is with the aspirations to apply the rule of law, achieve accountability, as well as to promote deterrence and public education, that feminists worked for decades to achieve recognition of violence against women on the human rights agenda.(19) Recently, Jadranka Cigelj and Nusreta Sivac, among others, pressed for the landmark indictments of Serb officials for the unprecedented charge of rape as a weapon of war and crime against humanity.(20) Attaining those indictments against officials who ran Omarska, the notorious prison camp in the former Yugoslavia, is itself a landmark in the trial-based vision of justice following mass atrocities. Even though actual arrests and prosecutions have been slow in coming--and may not actually occur in many of the most heinous instances--the steps of legal analysis and accomplishment involved in the indictments are real and worthwhile precedents for the future. The mission of articulating and protecting human rights is advanced by recognizing that genocidal or ethnic cleansing rape has been practiced specifically "to drive women from their homes or destroy their possibility of reproducing within and `for' their community."(21)
Similarly, human rights groups have identified sexual violence during the Rwanda Genocide and its aftermath as a crucial target for human rights initiatives.(22) They document deliberate propaganda efforts used to exploit and inflame ethnic tensions.(23) One particular technique portrayed Tutsi women as both attractive and dangerous.(24) Testimony by survivors of the genocide suggest that the assaulting Hutus perpetrated rapes and sexual abuse of Tutsi women and girls in systematic ways.(25) Rather than the behavior of individual soldiers who lost control, the rapes and sexual slavery should be viewed as war crimes or violations of other legal protections.(26)
In the United States, women's initiatives have pressed successfully for adversarial trials as the proper response to a range of harms and wrongs affecting women. Thus, more vigorous criminal prosecutions of rape and incest, criminal prosecutions of rapes committed by husbands,(27) federal civil actions treating gender-based violence, including rape and abuse, as violations of civil rights,(28) and employment discrimination actions for sexual harassment, all express a vision of adversarial trials as the proper framework for realizing justice.
On the restorative justice front, some feminists have supported mediation, the use of third parties to facilitate problem-solving approaches to conflicts, but usually not in the context of violence. Indeed, feminists are more likely to express concerns about mediation in the context of violence and abuse than to endorse it.(29) Feminists have argued for de-criminalizing maternal drug abuse and developing excuses and pardons for women who commit violence against those who have abused them.(30) The battered-women's defense and clemency drives for women who kill their batterers are specific examples. Feminists have also urged compassionate approaches to women who have been charged with child neglect and abuse, most notably when those women have themselves been victims of abuse. Yet, strikingly, feminists are not among those advocating forgiving, restorative approaches toward offenders who commit violence against women, or other kinds of violent crimes.(31)
At the same time, some feminist theorists have argued more abstractly for an ethic of care in the practice of justice, either as a complement or a substitute for the dominant adversarial paradigm.(32) Stressing nurturance of human relationships, this ethic of care would seem a perfect theory to undergird restorative justice. The image of peaceful political expression by the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo protesting the "disappearance" of their children in Argentina suggests a kind of political action compatible with an ethic of care. Some observers worry, however, about the ultimate lack of political power in such protests.(33)
For feminist versions of restorative justice closer to the exercise of state power, I will have to sketch what could be built upon some sparse suggestions. Robin West, for example, summarizes feminist interest in reconstructing the role of the judge as an empathic, contextually-sensitive, and compassionate individual who immerses in the stories of others.(34) Literature that reminds us of victims' presence and experiences is celebrated by West and other feminists as an important corrective to a justice system that too often renders those who have suffered invisible or complicit in their own victimization.(35) Neither West nor those she describes become particularly specific about what this might mean in response to those charged with atrocities. Perhaps, though, the call for immersion in context and empathic listening to and construction of stories would advance the project of restorative justice, at least insofar as that project itself emphasizes social integration and inclusion even of wrongdoers in the community that needs to heal. Yet West herself indicates that a compassionate, caring justice system would not give a light sentence to a man who killed his wife after finding her in bed with another man.(36) Such a sentence, in her view, reflects partial and biased understanding rather than justice, nurturance without consistency, and compassion without integrity.(37)
Usually, the focus of feminist theories is ordinary daily life, not responses to horrific crimes. Indeed, most moral philosophers of any stripe also neglect the morality of killing and violence.(38) One exception is Annette Baier who has addressed the topic of violent demonstrators, including terrorists, in her work in ethics.(39) She offers a kind of respect for terrorists who seek to command the attention of the more powerful through rebellion against perceived wrongs.(40) Thus, Baier asserts that it is no more difficult and no less appropriate "to forgive the terrorist who sincerely believes that he has no other effective way to make his seriously aggrieved group's case than to forgive the glory-seeking or super-security-seeking national leader in whose war one dies as a conscript or as a civilian victim."(41) Baier's strategy is to place the violence of a terrorist in familiar landscapes, as well as respect for protest against perceived injustices.(42) She finds vengeance a familiar and sympathetic passion,(43) and cites Hume for the pointlessness of moral injunctions against violence.(44) Seeing terrorist violence as a demonstration of power to make others feel resentment about exclusion, Baier urges inclusion "at least in the cooperative schemes we set up in order to listen to one another's grievances."(45)
Thus, feminist activists tend to support adversarial trials and punishment as responses to harms to women, but restorative processes to understand and reintegrate women who commit violent harms. Some feminist work also supports inclusionary restorative processes, seeking ultimately forgiveness, as responses to terrorism and other atrocities.
Perhaps I should simply stop here, and admit that feminists simply have been interested in what is good for women. Yet, I have already suggested ways in which some feminist work moves beyond those confines. In addition, as I will suggest in two specific examples, potential collisions between the two perspectives are already coming to light in specific contexts of interest to feminists. Therefore, I will press for a more general theory, and explicit acknowledgment and treatment of the competing approaches.
Two Examples
The first example arises in the debate over whether prosecutors should adopt a "no-drop" rule in pursuing charges of domestic violence. Cheryl Hanna, for example, has written powerfully about the dilemma.(46) The drive for a criminal justice approach to domestic violence can founder, she suggests, if the victim retains control over the decision to prosecute, because the very intimidation and injuries at stake may then halt the push for accountability and punishment.(47) Victims of domestic violence who do not want to testify against their abusers may change their stories to protect the batterers, themselves, or children in the home.(48) Therefore, some prosecutors have experimented with "no-drop" policies that either refuse to halt a prosecution simply because the victim refuses to testify or else provides support and advocacy for the reluctant victim to enable prosecutions to proceed.(49) As one prosecutor explains, "batterers must not be allowed to control justice."(50)
Yet, no-drop policies deprive or constrict the victim's choices and refuse deference to her own assessment of the promises and perils of proceeding with prosecution. This result troubles feminists who seek to elevate respect for women.(51) Disrespect for women's own agency is one of the central targets of feminist law reform efforts.(52) Hanna herself argues that the societal interests in responding to domestic violence justify the potential disrespect for women's choices posed by a no-drop rule, although Hanna also proposes techniques for prosecuting without the victim's testimony or with assistance for the reluctant victim-witness.(53) Others argue against a no-drop policy.(54)
The debate over no-drop policies should also be understood in light of the contrast between prosecutorial and restorative approaches to violence. Some women are reluctant to prosecute because they want to maintain loving ties and rebuild the relationship with the offender.(55) Although for some women, at some times, this desire may reflect economic and emotional dependencies, for some women, at some times, it reflects an empathic, inclusionary response to violence. Even the offender is a victim; even the offender deserves help and forgiveness.
The problem for feminists is how to assess whether a particular survivor of violence wants to forego prosecution out of strength or out of weakness. This problem is mirrored in a notable book authored by two philosophers who debate the appropriateness of mercy and forgiveness more generally.(56) In their book, Forgiveness and Mercy, Jeffrie Murphy and Jean Hampton conceive of the underlying resentments we feel about harms and injuries in terms of messages of insult.(57) Murphy, a defender of resentment and retribution, argues that the wrongdoer thus has not only caused injury but also communicated a message of insult, that the victim does not matter and instead deserves disrespect.(58) Therefore, suggests Murphy, the victim properly should respond with resentment and even hatred to re-assert self-respect after the degrading put-down of the injury.(59) A response of forgiveness risks expressing low-self-esteem or the victim's own tendency to accept the insult and become complicit in the injury.(60)
Hampton, who defends forgiveness, suggests that some may forgive without risking their self-respect in order to refrain from degrading the offender and further passing on the messages of disrespect.(61) She urges efforts by victims to resist hatred and instead learn more about the wrongdoer as a person, while including that person in the realm of shared morality.(62) Even for the wrongdoer who has not yet repented, forgiveness makes sense to Murphy as an act of generosity and an effort to transform the relationship between the victim and the offender.(63)
As this philosophers' debate suggests, a restorative approach may reflect as healthy a form of self-respect held by the victim as would a retributive approach. To be fair, the philosophers did not discuss anything as specific as the no-drop debate in the domestic violence context. Further, their debate over forgiveness could persist even in the face of prosecution, for an individual may testify against a defendant and support punishment and prosecution while independently offering forgiveness. Nonetheless, a full expression of the ideas behind forgiveness would lead many people away from prosecution, and that is why the no-drop debate includes a collision between the punishment and restorative approaches. This dimension of the no-drop debate deserves as much attention from feminists as the more general issues of respecting women's autonomy and self-determination.
The second example of a collision between the punishment and restorative responses to violence arises in assessments of reparations for women who have suffered horrific violence. Prime Minister Ryutara Hashimoto of Japan offered a letter of apology and monetary reparations to some 500 survivors of the 200,000 "comfort women" or sexual slaves imprisoned by the Imperial Army during World War II.(64) Only six of the women accepted the offer.(65) Most others rejected it largely because the fund came from private sources rather than from the government itself.(66) Even those who accepted the money, however, emphasized that no monetary payment could repay the horrors and humiliations they experienced from the rapes and violence.(67) Some of the women--from Korea, Taiwan, China, the Philippines, and Indonesia--found what seemed to them more gratifying help when the U.S. Justice Department placed the names of sixteen Japanese individuals involved in enslaving the women for sex on a "`watch list'" of suspected war criminals barred from entering the United States.(68) Some argued that only prosecutions by the Japanese government would adequately express governmental contrition and redress the abuse.(69) Others have supported discussion of the comfort women in textbooks as a kind of reparation through memory.(70)
The debate exists; it occurs directly in a terrain of concern to feminists. It represents a collision between prosecutorial and restorative approaches. Is there a correct or admirable position in this debate? Is there one that can be informed by feminist ideas?
Toward Answers
My own understanding of feminist ideas suggests that a single answer will not and should not be forthcoming. Attention to context and particular settings and interests will be crucial. Yet, the move to context should not be a dodge from normative discussion. Instead, it should invite us to try to clarify the factors and concerns that should make different contexts matter in normative judgments, while also pressing for immersion in particular problems to test and refine those judgments.
In that spirit, then, I suggest three initial ideas to guide the choice between prosecutorial and reparative approaches to atrocities. First, priority should be given to restoring respect and self-respect to victims, regardless of the response that is chosen. In general, this creates a presumption against no response. Yet, the entire range of potential responses should be included in this norm. A failure to prosecute OR to seek reparations OR apology OR some other public response to an act of violence is presumptively disrespectful of the victim, even if the perpetrator is unavailable or unwilling to participate. This means that a range of responses, sponsored by the government or other collectivities, must be developed even when prosecution of the offender or apology by the perpetrator is impossible.
Second, attention to the victim's own desires matters, but the victim may need psychological and material support to be able to develop and express a desire free from fear or self-degredation. Hence, practically speaking, victim-witness programs should be strengthened and made available even to victims who do not want to participate in prosecutions. Social welfare supports should also be available to survivors of violence in the immediate aftermath to enable relatively autonomous choices about prosecution, forgiveness, and the range of potential responses to the violence.
Third, governments should explore and establish alternatives to prosecution and retribution to permit institutional settings for those who prefer reparative, restorative responses to violence. Perhaps formats such as truth commissions could be created following episodes of serious violence, even when they fall short of massacres and mass atrocities. Legislative hearings to debate reparations and executive considerations of clemency and apologies should be institutionalized so that more people can expect to participate in the discussions, and pursue those avenues along side or instead of prosecutions.
You may remember a ghastly event nearly ten years ago in Quebec. A self-proclaimed anti-feminist man walked into a university setting and gunned down fourteen women.(71) At the Women's Centre, shortly thereafter, there appeared a sign that read, "`We are Gentle, Not Really Angry People.'"(72) Later, an occupant of the Centre changed the sign to read, "`We are Gentle, Not Nearly Angry Enough People.'"(73)
Both responses to violence are worth our attention; and thus we must also attend to how to make both avenues of responses viable, and when to pick between them.
* This speech was delivered at the Anna E. Hirsch Lecture Series, held at the New England School of Law on January 30, 1998. It grows from Martha Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence (Beacon Press, forthcoming). Thanks especially to Judi Greenberg.
** Professor, Harvard Law School
1. See, e.g., Jim Consedine, Restorative Justice: Healing the Effects of Crime (1995); Criminal Justice, Restitution, and Reconciliation (Burt Galaway & Joe Hudson eds., 1990); Howard Zehr, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice (1990).
2. See Consedine, supra note 1, at 157-58; see also Albert Eglash, Beyond Restitution, in Restitution in Criminal Justice 91 (Joe Hudston & Burt Galaway eds., 1977); Daniel W. Van Ness, New Wine in Old Wineskins: Four Challenges of Restorative Justice, 4 Crim. L.F. 251, 258-60 (1993).
3. See Consedine, supra note 1, at 160.
4. See generally Mark S. Umbrieet, Holding Juvenile Offenders Accountable: A Restorative Justice Perspective, 46 Fam. Ct. J. 31 (1995).
5. See Consedine, supra note 1, at 161-64.
6. Father Michael Lapsley, Bearing the Pain in Our Bodies, in To Remember and To Heal: Theological and Psychological Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation 21 (Human & Rousseau: Cape Town 1996) (Interview for BBC Radio, April 13, 1994).
7. Some models build upon 12-step programs intended to help people recover from chemical dependencies, obsessions, and other limitations that contribute to their abusive behavior.
8. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Foreword to To Remember and To Heal, supra note 6, at 7-8.
9. See Terry Dowall, Psychological Aspects of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in To Remember and To Heal, supra note 6, at 27, 36; Dullah Omar, Introduction to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in To Remember and To Heal, supra note 6, at 24, 26.
10. See generally William Minoru Hohri, Repairing America (1988); Eric K. Yamamoto, Friend, or Foe or Something Else: Social Meanings of Redress and Reparations, 20 Denv. J. Int'l L. & Pol'y 223 (1991); Deborah L. Levi, Note, The Role of Apology in Mediation, 72 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1165 (1997).
11. See Martha Minow, Not Only for Myself: Identity, Politics, and the Law 90-91 (1997).
13. See Apology Now; Vigilance, Too, Plain Dealer, May 26, 1997, at 8B.
14. The Tuskegee Apology, St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 21, 1997, at 6C; see also Joan Beck, Apology Can't Erase Tuskegee Horror, Experiment on Black Men Remains a Blot on American History, St. Louis Post Dispatch, May 20, 1997, at 7B. Interestingly, the President's apology occurred after a widely-acclaimed television documentary on the subject entitled "Miss Evers' Boys." John Carman, The Emmy Nominees Are--Wait, You Again?, S.F. Chron., Sept. 12, 1997, at C1.
15. Some have called for a similar governmental apology for slavery, while others maintain that an apology in that context would be too trivial or too late. Compare DeWayne Wickham, Why Clinton Must Stop Dodging Slavery Apology, USA Today, Dec. 16, 1997, at 15A with Bill Nichols, Should the Nation Apologize? Critics Argue Substance is Need, Not Symbolism, USA Today, June 18, 1997, at 1A.
16. Nichols, supra note 15, at 1A.
17. See Michael Henderson, Forgiveness Can Change a Life, a World, L.A. Times, May 25, 1997, at M5.
18. I must include myself in this description. See, e.g., Martha Minow & Elizabeth V. Spelman, In Context, 63 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1597 (1990); Martha Minow, Beyond Universality, 1989 U. Chi. Legal F. 115.
19. See Rhonda Copelon, Gendered War Crimes: Reconceptualizing Rape in Time of War, in Women's Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives 197, 198 (Julie Peters & Andrea Wolper eds., 1995).
20. See, e.g., Gayle Kirshenbaum, Women of the Year: Jadranka Cigelj and Nusreta Sivac, Ms. Mag., Jan./Feb. 1997, at 64.
21. Copelan, supra note 19, at 205.
22. See generally Human Rights Watch et al., Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence During the Rwandan Genocide and Its Aftermath (1996).
27. See generally Lisa R. Eskow, Note, The Ultimate Weapon?: Demythologizing Spousal Rape and Reconceptualizing Its Prosecution, 48 Stan. L. Rev. 677 (1996).
28. See generally Kristin L. Taylor, Note, Treating Male Violence Against Women as a Bias Crime, 76 B.U. L. Rev. 575 (1996) (discussing the Violence Against Women Act).
29. See Jennifer Gerarda Brown, The Use of Mediation to Resolve Criminal Cases: A Procedural Critique, 43 Emory L.J. 1247, 1249 (1994); Jana B. Singer, The Privatization of Family Law, 1992 Wis. L. Rev. 1443, 1497-1508.
30. See, e.g., Cheri Hass, Note, State v. Gray: De-Criminalization of Maternal Drug Abuse or a Momentary Reprieve?, 25 U. Tol. L. Rev. 1013 (1995).
31. For some who do, see Robert E. Freeman-Longo, Reducing Sexual Abuse in America: Legislating Tougher Laws or Public Education and Prevention, 23 New Eng. J. On Crim. & Civ. Confinement 303 (1997).
32. See, e.g., Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (1982); Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (1984); Sarah Ruddick, Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace (1989); Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (1993); Robin West, Caring for Justice (1997).
33. See Tronto, supra note 32, at 5.
34. See West, supra note 32, at 205-06.
38. See Annette C. Baier, Moral Prejudices: Essays on Ethics 218 (1995).
44. See Baier, supra note 38, at 220-21.
46. See generally Cheryl Hanna, No Right to Choose: Mandated Victim Participation in Domestic Violence Prosecutions, 109 Harv. L. Rev. 1849 (1996).
49. See id. at 1863-64 (comparing "hard" and "soft" no-drop policies); see also generally Donna Wills, Domestic Violence: The Case for Aggressive Prosecution, 7 UCLA Women's L.J. 173 (1997).
50. Wills, supra note 49, at 179.
51. See Hanna, supra note 46, at 1854; see also generally Joan L. Neisser, Lessons for the United States: A Greek Cypriot Model for Domestic Violence Law, 4 Mich. J. Gender & L. 171 (1996).
52. See, e.g., Kathryn Abrams, Sex Wars Redux: Agency and Coercion in Feminist Legal Theory, 95 Colum. L. Rev. 304 (1995).
53. See Hanna, supra note 46, at 1862-64; Neisser, supra note 51, at 240-44 (proposing judicial discretion to evaluate whether a particular victim-witness should be compelled to cooperate with prosecution).
54. See, e.g., Clare Dalton & Elizabeth M. Schneider, The Unwilling Witness, N.Y. Times, Feb. 21, 1996, at A19; Linda G. Mills, Intuition and Insight: A New Job Description for the Battered Woman's Prosecutor and Other More Modest Proposals, 7 UCLA Women's L.J. 183, 185-86 (1997).
55. See Christine A. Littleton, Women's Experience and the Problem of Transition: Perspectives on Male Battering of Women, 1989 U. Chi. Legal F. 23, 46-47; see also generally Robin West, Jurisprudence and Gender, 55 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1 (1988) (emphasizing significance of maintaining personal connections in women's lives).
56. Jeffrie G. Murphy & Jean Hampton, Forgiveness and Mercy (1988).
62. See Murphy & Hampton, supra note 56, at 83-85.
64. See Seth Mydans, WWII Rape Victim Accepts Japanese Reparation, Dallas Morning News, Dec. 13, 1996, at 61A.
67. See id. In contrast, one letter writer argued that reparations would be more important than apologies. See C. Suzuki, Letter: Concentrate on Reparations, South Morning Post, Sept. 13, 1995.
68. Sonni Efron, Justice Delayed 50 Years, L.A. Times, Dec. 13, 1996, at A1.
71. See Joshua Dressler, Hating Criminals: How Can Something That Feels So Good Be Wrong, 88 Mich. L. Rev. 1448, 1448 (1990).
72. Id. (quoting Ann Sweeney, The Shadow of Death, Detroit News, Dec. 16, 1989, at C1).