Adjoa A. Aiyetoro

Formulation Reparations Litigation Through the Eyes of the Movement

NYU Annual Survey of American Law (2003)

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Historic and Modern Social Movements for Reparations: The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'Cobra) and its Antecedents

Texas Wesleyan Law Review (2010)

The Reparations Movement in the United States Virgin Islands

The University of Chicago Press Journals (2018)

The Politics of Reparation for Black Americans

Annual Review of Political Science, 26:291–304 (2023).

Faire justice de l’irréparable: esclavage colonial et responsibilités contemporaines

Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin (2019)

Lexique des Réparations de l’Esclavage

CIRESC (2021)

The Rise of the Reparations Movement

Radical History Review Duke University Press (2003)

Reparations: Pro and Con

Oxford University Press, 2008

The Case for Reparations for Slavery in the Caribbean

Journal of Slavery & Abolition, Vol. 35 (2014)

France's Overdue Debt to Haiti

New York University Journal of International Law and Politics (2022)

In 1825, in exchange for formal recognition of statehood, France coerced Haiti to pay a 150 million-franc “indemnity” to compensate former plantation owners for the loss of their slaves. Although the Haitian people view this “Independence Debt” as a grave injustice, there has not been a precise definition of the specific laws France violated and the subsequent legal claims stemming from those violations. In this paper, the authors argue that France breached customary international law by: (1) violating the good faith requirements under pacta sunt servanda and (2) demanding unacceptable compensation in exchange for recognition. While Haiti may bring both claims before the International Court of Justice (the “ICJ”), which has jurisdiction over breaches of customary international law, procedural obstacles exist regarding the ICJ’s jurisdictional requirement of consent and the common law doctrine of laches. Despite these legal challenges, the authors argue that seeking legal redress in the ICJ may still prove valuable.

Restitution for Haiti, Reparations for All: Haiti's Place in the Global Reparations Movement

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review (2023)

Comparative Analysis of Reparations for the Holocaust and for the Transatlantic Slave Trade

The Review of Black Political Economy (2019)

This article provides a legal and economic comparison of proposed reparations for the Transatlantic Slave Trade and already realized German Holocaust reparations. Neither injustice was legal at the time according to international common law. This line of legal reasoning was successfully applied at the Nuremberg trials but did not lead to Holocaust reparations. Instead, representatives of the perpetrator side reached out to representatives of the victimized side. Emory University’s Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database is used to determine the amounts the primarily European countries who participated in the slave trade would owe if the same per-victim reparations rate were applied, both uncompounded and compounded over time. After controlling for differences in the number of victims and the passage of time, Transatlantic Slave Trade reparations demands resemble German Holocaust reparations payments. Thus, German Holocaust reparations may serve as a blueprint for eventual Transatlantic Slave Trade reparations.

Quilombo Land Rights, Brazilian Constitutionalism, and Racial Capital

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law (2021)

Towards a Framework for Caribbean Reparations

Journal of Caribbean History University of West Indies Press (2019)

Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition

Haymarket Books (2019)

Katherine Franke makes a powerful case for reparations for Black Americans by amplifying the stories of formerly enslaved people and calling for repair of the damage caused by the legacy of American slavery. Repair invites readers to explore the historical context for reparations, offering a detailed account of the circumstances that surrounded the emancipation of enslaved Black people in two unique contexts, the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Davis Bend, Mississippi, Jefferson Davis’s former plantation. Through these two critical historical examples, Franke unpacks intergenerational, systemic racism and white privilege at the heart of American society and argues that reparations for slavery are necessary, overdue and possible.

Commentary--Reparations as a Development Strategy: The Caricom Reparations Commission

The University of Chicago Press Journals (2013)

National and International Perspectives on Movements for Reparations

The University of Chicago Press Journals (2018)

The Handbook of Reparations

The International Center for Transitional Justice, Oxford University Press (2006)

This Handbook provides a broad range of essential information about past experiences with massive reparations programs as well as normative guidance for future practice. It examines in detail reparations programs in different parts of the world; includes thematic papers on topics that frequently come about in the design and implementation of reparations programs; and, finally, reproduces key documents on reparations, including national legislation.

Getting to Reparations: Japanese Americans and African Americans

Oxford University Press (2004)

The literature on social movements shows why the Japanese American reparations movement was successful, while the African American reparations movement has had far less success. How the claim is framed is extremely important for a reparations movement. Even though treatment of African Americans in the past violated key contemporary precepts such as the importance of bodily integrity, the ideal of equality, and the sanctity of private property, African American claimants encounter several problems. Victims of direct harms are dead, perpetrators are diffuse, some of the actual harms were legal at the time they were committed, and the causal chain of harm is long and complex. Some estimates of reparations due would also impose unreasonable burdens on government and American citizens.

A Dream Revived: The Rise of the Black Reparations Movement

NYU Annual Survey of American Law (2003)

Post-Multicultural Anxieties? Reparations and the Trajectories of Indigenous Citizenship in La Guajira, Colombia

The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (2011)

The Caribbean Reparation Movement and British Slavery Apologies: An Appraisal

Journal of Caribbean History University of West Indies Press (2017)

Holocaust Reparations Litigation: Lessons for the Slavery Reparations Movement

NYU Annual Survey of American Law (2003)

The Unanticipated Consequences of Haitian Reparations

University of Hawai'i  Review (2018)

Oxford University Press (2022)

Reparations for Slavery in International Law examines the case for contemporary redress for the harms and legacies of transatlantic enslavement from a legal perspective. It critically evaluates the history of transatlantic enslavement and the evolutions in international law that justified and perpetuated the exploitation of African people and people of African descent. It unpacks the requirements of state responsibility, assessing the impact of time on claims for redress for historic injustices. It presents a new theory of reparatory justice, responsive to both the underpinning principles and the modalities of redress in international law. This book considers the emerging practice of reparations in transitional justice and the relevance of these frameworks in cases of widespread historic injustice, while upending orthodox understandings of the international legal frameworks relevant to case for reparations. In so doing, it opens new space for the reconsideration not only of the international legal claim for reparations for slavery but also the moral and political case.

Reconsidering Reparations

Oxford University Press (2022)

Reparations for slavery have become a reinvigorated topic for public debate over the last decade. Most theorizing about reparations treats it as a social justice project - either rooted in reconciliatory justice focused on making amends in the present; or, they focus on the past, emphasizing restitution for historical wrongs. Taiwo argues that neither approach is optimal, and advances a different case for reparations - one rooted in a hopeful future that tackles the issue of climate change head on, with distributive justice at its core. This view, which he calls the "constructive" view of reparations, argues that reparations should be seen as a future-oriented project engaged in building a better social order; and that the costs of building a more equitable world should be distributed more to those who have inherited the moral liabilities of past injustices.

This approach to reparations, as Taiwo shows, has deep and surprising roots in the thought of Black political thinkers such as James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr, and Nkechi Taifa, as well as mainstream political philosophers like John Rawls, Charles Mills, and Elizabeth Anderson. Taiwo’s project has wide implications for our views of justice, racism, the legacy of colonialism, and climate change policy.

"Colonialism, reparations, and global justice," Published in Reparations

Oxford University Press (2007)

This chapter examines two basic philosophical challenges for the idea of reparations for past injustices (using colonialism as the focal point). The first challenge is that requiring people today to make reparations for an injustice they themselves did not commit is unfair. The second is that if reparative claims are invoked because of lingering injustices, then recalling the past is, in fact, normatively redundant if lingering present injustices can be handled by forward-looking principles. In response to the first challenge, the author argues that the unfairness worry is deflected if one adopts a collectivist model of responsibility, i.e., one that holds states instead of individuals to be the responsible actor. Against the redundancy objection, the author suggests that reparative arguments can supplement and reinforce forward-looking distributive principles.

Paying for the Past?: The Movement for Reparations for African-Americans

Journal of Human Rights (2010)

"Racial justice as transitional justice”

Polity, Vol. 36, Issue 1, pgs 53-71 (2003)

"A truth commission for the United States?"

Intertexts, Vol. 7, Issue 2, pgs 157-169, University of Nebraska Press (2003)

Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric 9 (2) (2016)

The paper assesses current rising reparations claims for the Maafa/ Maangamizi from two angles. First, it explores the connectivity of reparations and global justice, peace and security. Second, it discusses how the claim is justified in international law. The concept of reparations in international law is also explored, revealing that reparations cannot be limited to financial compensation due to the nature of the damage and international law prescriptions. Comprehensive reparations based in international law require the removal of structures built on centuries of illegal acts and aggression, in the forms of transatlantic slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism. Reparations must also lead to the restitution of sovereignty to African and indigenous peoples globally. They are indispensable to halt the destruction of the earth as human habitat, caused by the violent European cultural, political, socio-economic system known as capitalism that is rooted in transatlantic slavery.

The Politics of Reparations and Apologies

Spring Series in Transitional Justice (2013)

The Politics of Reparations and Apologies examines the evolution and dynamics of reparation politics and justice. The volume introduces the key concepts, theories, and terms associated with social movements and in particular, the redress and reparation movement (RRM). Drawing from RRMs that have their foundation in World War II--the German genocides, the United States internments, and the Japanese “comfort women” system-- the volume explores each case study’s relative success or failure in achieving its goals and argues that there are overarching trends that can explain success and failure more generally in the RRM movement. Using the backdrop of international criminal law and normative concepts of reparations, the volume establishes and analyzes the roles of reparations and apologies in obtaining transitional justice.

Racial Reparations: Japanese American Redress and African American Claims

Boston College Third World Law Journal (1988)