contribute to setting expectations that normally cannot be satisfied by massive reparations programmes, these awards can be used by victims and their representatives to put pressure on their Governments to establish massive programmes with high benefits. Given the usual reluctance of Governments to establish reparations programmes in the first place, this leverage becomes particularly important. Beyond this catalytic role of the judicial resolution of reparations claims, cases resolved in courts of law serve additional important functions, not least because gaining reparations in a court is one way of guaranteeing that there will be a close connection between the reparations awards and other justice measures inherent in the judicial process, including punishment and truth-telling. Although this is true especially at the individual level, the societal consequences of judicial cases go much further, in particular by affirming norms and rights and condemning forms of behaviour that transgress them.64 Programmes that stipulate that accepting their benefits forecloses other avenues of civil redress can be called final. The German programmes, as well as the programme established by the United States for the Japanese-Americans interned during the Second World War, are final in this sense: accepting benefits from these programmes requires waiving the possibility of pursuing civil cases in courts of law. But not all programmes are final in this sense. Those in Brazil and Chile do not require victims to surrender the possibility of pursuing reparations through the courts. The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission formulated a sophisticated position in this respect: according to its recommendations, receiving benefits from the reparations plan would leave without effect suits against the State, but would not interrupt or impede penal cases against perpetrators. If those cases proceed and individuals receive civil reparations awards through judicial procedures, they are required to return to the State whatever compensation benefits they had received through the reparations programme, so as to prevent anyone receiving compensation twice for the same violation. This position tries to preserve the victims’ access to courts, while protecting the stability of the reparations programme.65 It is difficult to decide, in the abstract, whether it is desirable, in general, for reparations programmes to be final. On the one hand, finality means that courts are made inaccessible to victims. On the other, once a Government has made a good-faith effort to create an administrative system that facilitates access to benefits, allowing beneficiaries to initiate civil litigation against the State poses not just the danger of obtaining double benefits for the same harm, but, worse, of jeopardizing the whole reparations programme. While the first problem can be easily addressed by stipulating that no one can gain benefits twice for the same violation, the second is not so easy to avoid, for the benefits obtained through the courts can easily surpass the benefits offered by a massive programme. This can lead to a significant shift in expecta- 64 65 See Jaime Malamud-Goti and Lucas Grosman, “Reparations and civil litigation: compensation for human rights violations in transitional democracies”, in The Handbook…. See also the careful study of reparations in Peru in Magarrell and Guillerot, op. cit., chap. 4. 35