  We establish sharp pointwise Green's function bounds and consequent
linearized and nonlinear stability for smooth traveling front solutions, or
relaxation shocks, of general hyperbolic relaxation systems of dissipative
type, under the necessary assumptions ([G,Z.1,Z.4]) of spectral stability,
i.e., stable point spectrum of the linearized operator about the wave, and
hyperbolic stability of the corresponding ideal shock of the associated
equilibrium system. This yields, in particular, nonlinear stability of weak
relaxation shocks of the discrete kinetic Jin--Xin and Broadwell models. The
techniques of this paper should have further application in the closely related
case of traveling waves of systems with partial viscosity, for example in
compressible gas dynamics or MHD.
