Reparations And Collective Responsibility

The debate over collective responsibility, primarily the allocation of responsibility to those within a collective group, has yet to be resolved. However, it is rarely the case that a debate arises over the membership of a collective comprised of victims. In the case of reparations, often being a group which has been wronged by a larger portion of the population or another group entirely, the ideas of both collective responsibility and collective victimization come into play. This thesis will discuss the issues surrounding membership of each collective and the relevant claims for reparations, which often take the forms of a minority group taking action against a government.Given the various attempts at establishing a universal method of collective responsibility, there is one in particular that presents an answer for both collective responsibility and collective victimization. The critical legal scholar Mari Matsuda, through her work:Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations, argues the case for governments, particularly the U.S. government, paying reparations against minority groups which have been mistreated. Using a primarily critical legalist approach, Matsuda refutes what she believes to be the three strongest arguments used against the establishment of a reparations precedent, while giving her own solutions to these problems. Before establishing whether Matsuda’s solutions are applicable, it is first necessary to provide an introduction to the basis for these solutions.In her work, Matsuda first provides the three main arguments against the establishment of a precedence for reparations payments. The first is regarding the difficulty of correctly deciding who is a victim who is due reparations, as well as who can be considered responsible for those crimes which have been committed by a larger collective. The second is regarding the difficulty in establishing a clear link between the current reparations claim and a past offense, particularly if a larger amount of time has passed since the original misdeeds. The third is regarding the difficulty in calculating exact damages caused against a victim group, as well as the decision of what form reparations will take. This argument centers mostly around the purpose of paying reparations, and what results are necessary for the reparations to be considered a success. Throughout her work, Matsuda maintains that the solution to all of these arguments, thus confirming the necessity for the US government to pay reparations, is to "look to the bottom," or to listen to those who are from unprivileged minority groups which have been mistreated as a collective.This thesis’purpose is to analyze whether the solutions Matsuda presents to these three questions will be able to solve the reparations claims which exist today, and whether or not these solutions are still applicable in the case of international reparations claims. In order to answer this question, this thesis will be analyzing two domestic reparations claims, the claim of Black Americans over slavery and the ensuing discrimination, and that of Japanese Americans for their internment during the Second World War. In the case of Japanese Americans, they received their reparations in the late 80s and early 90s, while Black Americans have yet to see their reparations claims be heeded by the US government. This difference stems primarily from the difficulty in assessing the membership of the victim group for Black Americans, due to the amount of time that has passed since slavery, and the differing degree of discrimination each member of the Black community has faced. This particular issue can be solved by Matsuda’s first solution, regarding the classification of both victim and perpetrator groups. However, particularly in the Black Americans’claims for reparations, there still exists the difficulty in establishing the clear connection between the claims and the crimes, as well as the difficulty in determining appropriate reparations forms. In the end, Matsuda’s analysis will need to be examined more closely to see whether they can resolve these remaining issues.As for what differences exist between domestic reparations claims and international reparations claims, this thesis examines the case of two particularly well-known cases:the reparations claims made against the German government for the Holocaust, as well as the claims made against the Japanese government for war crimes, including the atrocities committed during the Nanjing Massacre. Both cases involve atrocities recognized to be among the worst that humanity has committed, and yet the difference in reparations payments made by the two perpetrator groups in question is staggering. While the German government has continued to pay reparations up until recently, whether payments were made to countries affected by the war or directly to individuals affected by the Holocaust, the Japanese government has in total paid only a fraction of what the German government has. This thesis will analyze the reasons for these discrepancies, which correlate to Matsuda’s solutions of "Looking to the Bottom."As a result of the research carried out, it becomes clear that the reasons for the success of the domestic reparations claims made by the Japanese Americans and the international claims made by Jewish People, in contrast to the relative failure of the claims made by Black Americans and the Chinese government, are based in Matsuda’s solutions. Through analysis, it becomes clear that the Japanese American claims for reparations were simpler in terms of classifying victim group membership, establishing a connection between the crime and the acts of the government, and in deciding the appropriate form of reparations. Furthermore, in the case of Germany, there was a large amount of "help" which was offered by victim groups in terms of establishing a connection and paying appropriate amounts of reparations. This came largely in the form of Jewish People all over the world organizing to form the "Jewish Claims Court," which worked with the German government to establish appropriate programs for the payment of reparations to victims of the Holocaust and the War as a whole. As a result, the German government was better able to follow Matsuda’s solution of "Looking to the Bottom," thus satisfying the requirements needed for a successful payment of reparations.