The reparations campaign is a political movement, not a legal case. This is not a criticism. It is a description. The distinction matters because the campaign frequently uses legal language, talks about rights and debts and claims, in ways that imply a legal substance that does not exist.
No court has jurisdiction to hear a reparations claim against Britain from Caribbean states. No actionable legal mechanism exists for compelling payment. No limitation period accommodates a claim arising from events 200 to 400 years ago. The acts concerned were legal under the law of the time. And the 1833 compensation payment, whatever its moral deficiencies, represented the British state formally settling its legal accounts with the institution of slavery.
This section examines why the legal case for reparations does not exist, why the campaign’s lawyers know it does not exist, and why the campaign therefore operates entirely in the political rather than the legal domain.
