Foreign Policy and International Law

A special thank you to Rebecca Hamilton for her editing and review of this article.

Introduction

[H]ope is an important and constitutive aspect of the human person. Those who commit the most abhorrent and egregious of acts and who inflict untold suffering upon others, nevertheless retain their fundamental humanity and carry within themselves the capacity to change . . . To deny them the experience of hope would be to deny a fundamental aspect of their humanity and, to do that, would be degrading.[1]