As transitional justice seeks to reckon with a violent past in order to build a more peaceful future, its practitioners tend to operate on the assumption that the past, present and future are distinct periods. Globally, however, as different regions and states undergo different phases of transitional justice, it is difficult to identify linear processes of transition and of justice. When understood as a fluid process, transitional justice elicits questions about how governments, judiciaries, civil society, and victims engage with it as a vehicle for political change, repression, and justice. This engagement constitutes a complex set of interactions, ebbs, and flows that take place across space and time. With the benefit of hindsight and a mosaic of transitions, this special issue aims to recognise and interrogate the centrality and complexity of time in transition, justice, and transitional justice. The authors discuss five overarching dimensions of time: the timing of transitional justice interventions, the institutionalisation of time, the compartmentalisation of time, the politicisation of time, and ways to reconcile the temporal dichotomies of various transitional justice mechanisms

由于过渡司法试图考虑暴力的过去以建立更和平的未来，因此其实践者倾向于假设过去、现在和未来是不同的时期。然而，在全球范围内，由于不同地区和国家经历了不同阶段的过渡正义，因此很难确定过渡和正义的线性过程。当被理解为一个流动的过程时，过渡司法引发了关于政府、司法机构、民间社会和受害者如何将其作为政治变革、镇压和正义的载体的问题。这种参与构成了一系列复杂的互动、潮起潮落和流动，它们跨越时空发生。凭借后见之明和过渡的马赛克，本期特刊旨在认识和质疑过渡时期、正义和过渡时期正义的中心地位和复杂性。作者讨论了时间的五个总体维度：过渡时期司法干预的时机、时间制度化、时间划分、时间政治化，以及调和各种过渡时期司法机制的时间二分法的方法