In this chapter, we consider other forms of remedies which seek to vindicate the plaintiff’s rights by a public statement of those rights, including declarations and awards of nominal damages and apologies. The court may make a public statement of rights (as with declarations) or the defendant himself may be compelled to make the statement (as with apology orders). We first consider apologies, then declarations, nominal damages and contemptuous damages, and then finally other vindicatory awards available under the Australian Consumer Law.

Chapter 9 argues that apologies offer the most direct and explicit mechanism for states and churches to reframe and narrate historical-structural abuse. It argues that although apologies may address institutional or state failure to prevent historical abuses, or the illegitimacy of historical practices, few apologies take the further step of problematizing the claim by states and churches to have the legitimate power and authority to structure lives and society using violent, coercive, or dominating values and means. In doing so, they limit the capacity of the apology to impact underlying structures of power and authority in society or challenges to their fundamental self-identity or founding myth.

In this chapter, we consider other forms of remedies which seek to vindicate the plaintiff’s rights by a public statement of those rights, including declarations, awards of nominal damages and apologies. The court may make a public statement of rights (as with declarations) or the defendant himself may be compelled to make the statement (as with apology orders). Below, we first consider apologies, then declarations, nominal damages and contemptuous damages, and then finally other vindicatory awards available under the Australian Consumer Law.

Justice requires that each receive what they are due. Survivors are due full compensation. Responding to the regulative ideal of full compensation, the first part of this chapter sketches how a programme might set appropriate payment values, arguing that while those values will vary from time to time and place to place, they will be more credible when co-developed with survivors. Moreover, policymakers need to use the best available techniques when appraising the compensatory value of injuries. Later parts of the chapter criticise paternalistic techniques that withhold money from survivors or pay them in-kind and consider how payments should be communicated, reflecting on the role of apologies and on the beneficial potential of communal ceremonies.

In this concluding chapter, the analysis throughout this book reveals that both Disney and Pixar have a problem with their representation of women, primarily with underrepresentation of women both in speech and total number of characters. Other key points are that female characters are “disproportionately polite”: even though they speak less, they use more of the various markers that highlight a concern with maintaining the social fabric. This chapter also examines the “progress” that Disney and Pixar have made in terms of gender representation. The authors see some promising changes in representation and in talking time. The split between male and female speech in the New Age era is almost exactly 50-50% and some films even have female majority speech (Brave, Frozen II). Unfortunately, most of the other linguistic patterns tracked have not changed at all. Female characters continue to mitigate and apologize while male characters continue to insult and order people around, both in Disney and Pixar films. Finally, this chapter ends with where the authors hope both the future of Disney and Pixar will go, including: a wider range of characters (major and minor) who represent different ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds, a wider range of gender identity, more diverse linguistic styles associated with masculinity, and other progressive movements.

This chapter focuses on apologies, another active, face-saving politeness strategy. Apologies are a way of conducting politeness and preserving interpersonal relationships. There is a clear perception that women apologize more, or apologize unnecessarily, and this chapter examines if that is reflected in Disney and Pixar films. Quantitatively, both male and female characters apologize in these films, and in a certain proportion of the cases the authors suspect this is determined more by the specifics of the plot than by gender or any other characteristic of the speaker. At the same time, the authors find some patterning at the extremes that seems more clearly linked to gender. While apologizing may not be marked as specifically associated with femininity, non-apology strategies do seem to be mostly used by the male characters. One explanation for this is that women have been held more responsible for maintaining social relations and catering to the face needs of others. Femininity may be tied to a focus on making sure the social harm is repaired, while masculinity involves more of an emphasis on producing the speech act of the apology while (if possible) hedging against the inherent face threat it involves.

When after lengthy adjudication reparations eventually materialise in the locations where the atrocities occurred, survivors’ responses to such reparations vary greatly. Such responses may include relief and celebration, but reparations are just as likely to be met with confusion, contestation and/or rejection. The practices that determine how reparations are conceived significantly influence the responses that victims and others in society develop regarding such reparations. Behind these questions is the dynamic interrelationship between what courts have to offer and what victims accept as reparations. This chapter explores this conundrum by way of three concrete reparative measures considered or implemented in the context of the ECCC’s reparations mandate. In juxtaposing measures that were granted by ECCC judges as reparations and those that were rejected, the chapter shows some of the effects of courts’ practices on the meaning of reparations.

The literature on moral responsibility is ripe with accounts of what it takes for an agent to become blameworthy. By contrast, very little has been written about what it takes for an agent’s blameworthiness to cease or diminish. It seems that there are certain things a wrongdoer can feel or do that might make her less blameworthy than she would otherwise have been. She might experience guilt, atone, apologize, and make reparations. In this chapter, I will argue that prominent accounts of blameworthiness are unable to explain how such actions and emotions can influence one’s blameworthiness. I will then present an alternative account. If we understand blameworthiness in terms of deserved guilt rather than fitting resentment, we can give a plausible account of how blameworthiness can change over time. The fact that a wrongdoer has already experienced guilt, atoned, or apologized will make her less deserving of guilt, and therefore less blameworthy.

Chapter 8 addresses the manner in which the International Court of Justice interprets and applies satisfaction as a remedy of international law. The definition, function and categories of satisfaction are issues that this chapter addresses, along with its relationship to other remedies of international law, in particular to declaratory judgments. The differences between the manner in which satisfaction is prescribed by the International Law Commission through the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts and the mechanisms through which the Court grants this remedy generate controversy regarding its availability and applicability before the Court. The Corfu Channel Case is the most often quoted in situations in which satisfaction is considered as granted through the issuance of a declaration of illegality. As such, even if states often request satisfaction as formal apologies to be given by responding states the Court undertakes a different approach.

Chapter 12 is the first of two that deal with reactive politeness in intercultural contexts: the issues associated with handling relations when an offence has been perceived or when a disagreement/conflict has occurred or is emerging. The chapter focuses on situations in which one or both parties want to restore relations and considers how cultural factors may influence the process. Normally (although not exclusively), apologies are used to (try to) restore smooth relations. Unfortunately, there has been very little research into apologies from an evaluation perspective, neither prior to an apology (i.e. assessments relating to the behaviour that triggers the potential need for an apology) nor subsequent to an apology (i.e. whether the apology is accepted and smooth relations are restored). The chapter explores the potential impact of culture on the restoration process from three angles: culture and reactive assessments of an offence; culture and the performance of an apology; culture and the effectiveness of the apology.