 In spite of the fact that the peace versus justice tension is merely a specific manifestation of the problem of dirty hands, there is an important distinction that must be observed: while the tension between justice and social utility is part of the political life of any consolidated democracy, it is central and definitive of political life during transitions. In consolidated democracies, such tensions can be alleviated by legal institutions and traditions that embody conclusions about how to manage the requisite tradeoffs between justice and social utility (these include a constitution, a body of accepted constitutional jurisprudence, a respected high court with powers of judicial review, etc.). Part of the role of such institutions and traditions is to provide guidance about which tradeoffs would seem most justifiable given a comprehensive interpretation of the state's legal and political history. But transitional times are exactly the periods in which such institutions, traditions, and interpretive principles are first being set out. When the argument arose about abuses of executive power in the Unites States following the September 11, 2001 attacks, that debate could take place on the background of a history of executive power grabs and the responses to them (Jefferson's requisitioning of funds for the military without congressional approval and Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the civil war come to mind). In a transitional context, that long and important political discussion is missing.  More precisely, the very point of the transitional period is to set up the institutions and methods responsible for having that debate. The upshot of this predicament is two fold: it is harder for transitional societies to resolve peace versus justice decisions because the traditions and institutions so important for navigating these questions are not yet present. At the same time, the very act of creating of such institutions inevitably creates situations where peace and justice must clash: the need to quickly set up a competent court and police systems to allow for stable government may well require hiring administrators tainted during the tenure of the previous regime; the need to attract foreign investors and maintain peace in the streets may require some compromises on the extent and length of criminal proceedings against past perpetrators, and so forth.