Ethical imperatives and societal transformation: Evaluating transitional justice and reparations in post-communist Romania

Abstract This article examines how Romania’s post-communist reparations regime operates in practice through a case study of a civil damages pathway created for victims of communist-era political persecution and their heirs. The problem addressed is the gap between formal recognition of persecution and the uneven delivery of material and moral redress. The article focuses on a family subjected to the Bărăgan deportations, a campaign of forced internal displacement and dispossession carried out by the communist regime in the early 1950s. The case provides in-depth insight into reparations mechanisms, while its single-family focus limits generalizability. The article combines family archives and oral testimony with litigation files, first-instance and appeal judgments, and an illustrative model of forgone agricultural use. The case is used to examine how courts translate administrative persecution, dispossession, and long-term livelihood disruption into legally compensable categories. A brief comparison with Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland situates Romania’s court-centered model within broader post-communist redress designs. Using a four-part lens: retributive, restorative, distributive, and moral/symbolic justice, the analysis finds that courts can provide strong symbolic recognition while tying material compensation to narrowly documented assets. Long-horizon loss-of-use claims are constrained by the special-law character of the reparations framework and by strict proof requirements. Procedural delay, evidentiary fragmentation, and inter-court variation limit distributive consistency and weaken restorative effects. The article contributes a mechanism-focused account of how legal design and adjudication shape reparations and points to the need for clearer valuation guidance, streamlined procedures, and more consistent incorporation of victim testimony and public memory measures.