This Article strikes a contrast to views advanced by Eric Posner, Adrian Vermeule, and others that transitional justice can be sufficiently described and understood as a special case of "Ordinary Justice." Paying special attention to debates about reparations, this Article argues that transitional justice is extraordinary, reflecting the source and nature of atrocities perpetrated under an abusive regime, and focused on the challenges and goals that define transitions to democracy. In

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... , this Article argues that transitional justice is not profane, preservative, and retrospective, but, rather, Janus-faced, liminal, and transformative. The literature on reparations in transitions is divided between critics who regard reparations as quasi-tort awards that violate basic commitments to individual fairness and those who appeal to collective responsibility, atonement, or reconciliation as special transitional justice theories. These debates have not reached a persuasive resolution because both camps fail to recognize and take full normative account of the extraordinary conditions in abusive regimes. What distinguishes pretransitional abuses from ordinary crime is the role played by an abusive paradigm. An abusive paradigm is a combination of social norms, law, and institutional practice that utilizes a bipolar logic to justify targeted violence. Abusive paradigms gain authority after the collapse of dynamic stability-the overlapping network of associations and oppositions that restricts violence and