The Status of State Apologies

Abstract

Within just the past few years there has been a spate of state apologies, as a number of governments have either acknowledged a previous wrong against some particular domestic group, or else the apology has been transnational in scope as one state has acknowledged doing wrong to another state, but really to the people of this other country. 1 Of course, this apology phenomenon has not been restricted to states. 2 Rather, a wide array [End Page 911] of religious 3 and civic organizations, 4 and even business enterprises, 5 have started to issue their own apologies. In fact, so many apologies have been uttered by so many entities in the cause of so many things that political pundits and journalists have easily dismissed many of these efforts-- [End Page 912] perhaps the whole lot of them--as nothing more than a cheap effort at assuaging lingering guilt concerning some misdeeds from the past and, at the same time, to make those issuing the apology feel morally superior to those who came before them. 6