Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Yale Journal of International Law

Abstract

Between 1976 and 1983, a military dictatorship ruled Argentina and brought that country into an era of state-directed terror aimed at the civilian population. During that period, a small and vulnerable human rights community, allied with international backers, attempted to stay the hand of the military state and provide a measure of protection for the victims and potential victims of the dictatorship. The struggle was to defend the most elementary of human rights: freedom from arbitrary detention, torture, and summary execution. While the stakes in this struggle were high-life or death for thousands of individuals-it was nonetheless an unfortunately familiar effort to define the limits of what a state may inflict on its citizens. With the election of a civilian government in October 1983, however, this battle moved onto the unfamiliar ground of setting an affirmative agenda for the trial and punishment of those responsible for acts of state terror. With little guidance from Argentine history or the experience of other countries in the transition from military to civilian rule, and with the constant rumblings of future military uprisings as a backdrop, the restored civilian political and legal institutions turned to the issue that would dominate the first year of civilian rule: the prosecution of the military.

First Page

118

Volume

10

Publication Date

1984

Download

Share

COinS