Does anger have a place in societies transitioning out of dictatorship and civil conflict? Calls for coolheaded dialogue, forgiveness, and reconciliation have dominated the theory and practice of transitional justice, while the expression of negative emotions (particularly anger) has been associated with a spirit of rancor and a desire for revenge. It is against this conventional wisdom that Negative Emotions and Transitional Justice makes room for negative emotions, not only for their intrinsic worth, but also for a democratic society’s own sake.

Mihaela Mihai’s work represents a growing interest in affective responses to personal and collective suffering among political theorists. Its unique contribution is to construct a normative framework for democracies and democratizing regimes to acknowledge, assess, and incorporate negative emotions. The main argument is that anger in the face of injustice to oneself (resentment) and to others (indignation) is legitimate, yet not all expressions of negative emotions are appropriate for a constitutional democracy. In other words, the question is not whether any public display of negative emotions during human rights trials is safe for democracy; rather, it is about how and when such displays contribute to democratic deepening.

Mihai’s meticulous argumentation style sets this book apart among accounts of emotional responses to past abuses. The book presents insights into such diverse topics as emotional socialization, law and judicial review, reflective judgment, and human rights trials, straddling an impressive list of thinkers: John Rawls, Judith Shklar, Ronald Dworkin, Alessandro Ferrara, Lawrence Douglas, and Mark Osiel, among others. On the institutional side, she argues that constitutional democracies with past legacies of injustice cannot rest content with legitimate and just law-making in the present; the vindication of victimhood through transitional justice mechanisms should assure second-order redress enfranchisement, which complements the general enfranchisement achieved through constitutionalism and law-making (p. 42). Second-order enfranchisement requires attentiveness not only to past abuses in general, but also to angry responses in the wake of such abuses, from victims as well as perpetrators. This powerful normative defense of negative emotions in the face of injustice derives from a concern for justice as well as equal respect, which means that laws and courts should acknowledge fundamental rights and due-process protections for everyone, including alleged perpetrators.

In what ways do individual and institutional responses to past wrongs inform and influence each other? Mihai gives a complex account of individual emotions to argue that emotional dispositions are shaped in part by processes of socialization. Aside from its intrinsic worth for societies transitioning from periods of massive violations, “[t]aking the past seriously and engaging publicly with citizens’ politically relevant emotional responses represents a first opportunity for institutions to embark on a process of democratic emotional socialization” (p. 8; original emphasis). Since this account defines democracy as a regime with normative and cultural (and not merely institutional) components, the socialization of citizens’ emotional responses in democracy-affirming ways is both a precondition for, and a consequence of, life in a constitutional democracy: “Successful emotional socialization will result in the formation of context-appropriate emotions and their expression in culturally sensitive responses” (p. 64). Chapter 2 in particular delineates the factors that “institutional filtering” of emotions should take into consideration.

The book pays specific attention to domestic trials as the most appropriate venue for emotional socialization in the wake of conflict, but the normative framework presented in the work can guide other institutional mechanisms of coming to terms with the past. For courts to fulfill their pedagogic role through exemplary and reflective judgments, they should uphold legitimate procedure, concern for equal respect, and sensitivity to negative emotions. The case studies, which are more illustrative than comparative, explore judicial review of transitional justice legislation in Argentina and South Africa, and criminal trials of former heads of state in Romania and Peru. Except for the trial and execution of Nicolae Ceauşescu in Romania in 1989, which is presented as a negative case, all the case studies serve to confirm the book’s contention that there are real-world examples of successful emotional socialization through courts.

The book’s overall concern with the possibilities and limits of negative emotions in politics is laudable. However, the emphasis on the institutional filtering of emotions is unnecessarily restrictive, in great part because it puts too much trust on democratic institutions and too little on negative emotions. Citizens may express resentment and indignation, often in ways that appear unreasonable or disproportional, precisely because they want to disrupt institutions’ imposition of amnesty and amnesia on past abuses. To be fair, several sections in the book acknowledge the non-ideal circumstances under which this normative framework is put to test, and one passage even highlights the role of citizens’ indignation and civil disobedience in questioning a polity’s commitment to justice (pp. 54–55). Nonetheless, the book puts emphasis on the judiciary’s role in channeling emotions, whereby individuals enter the courtroom with their mixture of appropriate and inappropriate emotional responses, and (ideally) find themselves transformed through judicial pedagogy. An alternative reading of the case study of Argentina, however, would suggest that the relationship between emotionally charged social movements and institutions should be conceptualized as a two-way street: Courts were compelled to take action and finally declare the Full Stop and Due Obedience laws unconstitutional in the face of angry protests from victims’ groups in 2001 (p. 119). The question of pedagogy posed in this book, therefore, can be reversed: In what ways do social movements “educate” courts and other public institutions to take resentment and indignation seriously, and address calls for justice and equal respect?

One question that could have been explored further in the book is: Who is public pedagogy for? The book seems to presume that courts present an instance of emotional socialization for everyone—victims, victimizers, and bystanders. While there is evidence to suggest that trials and other transitional justice spectacles are indeed shown to raise awareness among some constituencies, especially the bystanders, the emotional socialization of former perpetrators and their allies into civic and democratic norms is less convincing. The Peruvian Supreme Court’s verdict against Alberto Fujimori in 2009 was praiseworthy in so many ways; yet neither the legitimate procedure nor the rights-affirming outcome convinced the Fujimorista politicians to recognize the value of fundamental rights, denounce extrajudicial killings, or stop vitriol against victims and human rights defenders. More troubling is the fact that Fujimori’s daughter lost the presidential race narrowly in 2011 and 2016 on a platform that reflected little, if any, commitment to an ethic of equal respect and non-violence. Presuming that the 2009 verdict is an exemplary moment of judicial pedagogy, it is safe to argue that perpetrators and their allies are not receptive to norm socialization, especially if they can count on political, economic, or military power. The larger takeaway from this criticism is to take power dynamics into consideration when the distribution of transitional justice and emotional learning is at stake.

In conclusion, the book’s cautious acknowledgment of negative emotions sets the right tone for political debates around the world. On the one hand, emotional responses to human rights violations deserve recognition; on the other hand, exclusionary and violent expressions of indignation, either by genuinely victimized groups or by self-righteous political movements with questionable claims to victimhood, make it necessary to set criteria for the inclusion of anger in politics. Negative Emotions and Transitional Justice opens a debate that students and scholars of normative political theory, transitional justice, and legal theory should participate.