Nomadic Justice? Restorative Justice on the Margins of Law

Abstract

PRACTITIONERS OF RESTORATIVE JUSTICE OFTEN DESCRIBE THEMSELVES AS OPERAT ing on the margins of the formal justice system. However, they differ with regard to how they problematize this status. Some embrace what seems tantamount to a nomadic existence and view their outsider role as an opportunity to challenge the norms and values of the criminal justice system; others see greater inclusion in the formal justice system as their ultimate goal. What is the basis of this claim to marginality? In this article, we examine the tensions that exist the restorative justice movement as it seeks to construct for itself a collective identity and define its broader goals. Our main contention is that the marginal status claimed by most restorative justice practitioners, and their fears of cooptation, are more imagined than real; indeed, restorative justice programs appear largely as outsiders within the criminal justice system. Nonetheless, it may be possible for restorative justice programs to pursue a specific form of nomadism ? a defined by the creation of subaltern counterpublics (Fraser, 1997) that would serve as the basis for interventions into the criminal justice system. In this manner, a transformative politics of restorative justice would involve a distancing from, and engagement with, the criminal justice system to challenge and rewrite the retributive codes of this system without becoming a mere appendage to its normal operation. Nomadic Justice The postmodern critique of the will to totality defined the dominant paradigms of social theory (e.g., Marxism, Parsonian functionalism) and brought into prominence the interpretation of social phenomena as decentered, frag

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