Opinion | How criminal trials of leaders can bring the country together

Those opposing prosecution say that such a meting out of justice would backfire, galvanizing Trump’s base. Some go so far as to suggest that seeing the former president “decked out in full orange, successfully prosecuted and dragged off to prison” would be a spectacle “more commonly associated with third world nations or undemocratic states.”

Growing up in Israel, in the shadow of the world’s longest-running conflict, I often considered whether it is better to forgo prosecution in favor of other forms of accountability and healing. As a young lawyer writing a doctoral thesis on international-dispute resolution, I served for a time at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and, later, as an adviser to the emerging government of what is now the Republic of South Sudan. For several years I’ve convened a course on international conflict resolution in Jerusalem, bringing together Jewish, Arab and international students, many from conflict zones, to talk about conflict and justice. That experience has convinced me, as it has others, that criminally prosecuting leaders can help heal polarized countries.

Some 30 years of research in transitional justice — the multidisciplinary study of how societies can constructively emerge from conflict and assert or reassert democratic values — provides evidence that, contrary to the understandable worry that a trial would be divisive, trials can instead help heal. In fact, they are considered one of the main methods to bring about “truth and reconciliation.”

Examples of such “transitional trials” include the prosecutions of Slobodan Milosevic in the aftermath of the Balkan wars, and of Augusto Pinochet for human rights violations committed during his presidency of Chile. In a less dramatic example of alleged corruption (rather than human-rights violations and war crimes), former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing criminal charges in a deeply divided Israel. In Italy, former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has been convicted of tax fraud.

The reasons trials help promote reconciliation are many. Trials are a performative affair. They are, among other things, a drama in which conflict is enacted and resolved. As such, they can compel attention in a way that pierces the disinformation bubble that has contributed to this era’s divisiveness. A trial of a former U.S. president is certain to be covered by news outlets that lean both right and left. The same would be true of a trial of a sitting…