As reparations’politics have become one of the most significant dimensions of the post-cold war era, there is a need to better understand the specificity of the financial compensation victims receive after the conflict. The genealogy of post-conflict compensation shows two different aspects related to the same set of practices, reparation and restitution. In order to clarify the differences between the one and the other, we need to discuss three major historical steps: the Westphalian and Grotian transition, the Kantian moment and Carl Schmitt’s critique of Worl War I reparations. This historical and constructivist analysis helps to better understand the post-cold war new regime of truth which privileges restitution vis-à-vis reparations.