Rosario Figari Layús: Project Description

The Role and Effects of Trials in Cases of Human Rights Violations in Argentina

Justice in the courts is one of the most prominent and demanded mechanisms to obtain accountability for human rights violations. Trials seek to respond to mass and systematic violence by focusing on individual perpetrators of serious violations of national and international human rights law. The so called “Legal Paradigm,” which considers the use of law as the most appropriate tool to restore victims and the society as a whole, has gradually assumed greater importance because scholars, activists, and policy makers conceive trials and the right to justice as the centerpiece of social repair. Thus, my project aims to explain the role of these trials by considering their effects and meanings not only for the victims but also at political and judicial levels. In doing so, it will also analyze how and to what extent trials and judicial decisions to prosecute human rights crimes deal with the crime of forced disappearance and thereby contribute to an understanding of the systematic illegal repression committed by the State in Argentina during the last military dictatorship. The analysis of trials shall consider their limits and effects for the victims as well as for other social groups. In this sense, this research poses the following questions: What are the social and political functions of trials in dealing with crimes committed in contexts of systematic human rights abuses? What are the political, social and symbolic effects of these trials? What kind of social representations of illegal repression, including forced disappearance as a complex and special repression method, of the victims and perpetrators do these trials foster?
Along with a review of extant literature, this research will collect data on the criminal trials in Argentina. This project will be based on qualitative data gathered through interviews with relevant actors, such as witnesses, members of the judicial system who participated in the selected trials, and exchanges with academics and activists in the field of human rights in Argentina. It will include content analysis, especially judicial decisions and verdicts, but will also consider specialized literature on the subject. The combination of several data sources shall enable scholarly accurate assessments.