The Centre for Law, Democracy, and Society at Queen Mary, University of London presents Nationality Now: The History, Culture, and Politics of Contemporary Citizenship 

Tuesday, 2 April 2019
10:00 – 17:30

Room 3.1, 67-69 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London

On 2 April, the Italian Unit of Mela will host a guest lecture by Professor Roger O'Keefe, professor of International Law at Bocconi University (Milan) and prior to that Professor of Public International Law at University College London (UCL) (2014–2018), at the University of Cambridge (1999–2014) and visiting professors in many universities. Professor O'Keefe will meditate on the future of international criminal law. The lecture will be in English.

After the very participated seminar on fake news, the Italian unit of Mela will continue to investigate the scary and fascinating dimension of the world wide web and its relation to memory. Next week we will host a guest lecture by Gabriele Della Morte, professor of International Law at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan) with an enigmatic and intriguing title: "Law and memory in the digital age: From an impossible oblivion to the right not to be seen". He will be introduced by MELA PI Emanuela Fronza. The lecture will be in English. 

"The fight against falsehood can only be fought in an environment of guaranteed pluralism because the key is the conflict of different versions, not the imposition of a 'correct description' of reality" (Daniel Innerrarity, El Pais, 09 May 2018)

On 13 March, the Italian Unit of MELA is proud to host a conference on the very hot topic of fake news: "Democracy as interpretation. About the wrong way of fighting fake news". How do we define true and false? How do we fight the spread of lies without incurring authoritative truth, which is incompatible with democracy? These are some of the issues that our guests will face. 

Daniel Innerarity, political and social philosopher, is professor at the School of Transnational Governance of the European University Institute, at the University of the Basque Country and the Ikerbasque Foundation for Science, Spain

Gabriela Jacomella, journalist, writer, researcher and trainer with a focus on disinformation and media literacy, is currently working at the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom at the European University Institute and she is co-founder of Factcheckers.it. 

The two main speakers will be introduced by MELA PI Emanuela Fronza and MELA Senior Researcher Michele Caianiello. 

A discussion with Fulvio Cortese (Unitn), Gaetano Insolera (Unibo) and MELA PL Eric Heinze will follow. 

On Friday, February 8th, the Dutch Team of the MELA Project, in collaboration with the Asser Institute, organised the Asser Institute's first Research Seminar. The event, entitled "Comparative Outlook on the Governance of Historical Memory on Transitional Contexts: South America and Eastern Europe", featured presentations from Dr Maria Mälksoo and Dr Juan Pablo Scarfi. In addition to our colleagues at the Asser Institute, eleven guests from various local institutions engaged with law and memory participated in the Seminar.

Dr Uladzislau Belavusau, Principal Investigator of the Dutch Team of MELA, gave a guest lecture at Tel Aviv University, Israel on 23 January. His presentation was entitled "Citizenship Laws, Jewish History and Politics of Memory in Europe".

The Italian Unit of Mela is proud to announce a conference with Prof. Mireille Delmas-Marty, Professor at College de France and member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. In her conference about "Legal humanism as compass for globalization", Prof. Delmas-Marty will be introduced by MELA PI Emanuela Fronza and comments by Nicolas Guillou (Judge at the Special Tribunal for Lebanon) and Professor Marina Timoteo (Unibo) will follow. 

Prof. Delmas-Marty will depart from a question about the effects of globalization on legal humanism. On the one hand, the former strengthens the latter through the development of international human rights law, the recognition of global public goods, or the emergence of humanitarian law and international criminal justice. On the other hand, globalization threatens legal humanism by the tightening of the control of migrations, the aggravation of social exclusions, the multiplication of the attacks on the environment, the persistence of the "most serious" international crimes and the risks of enslavement created by new technologies. Therefore, a new challenge ahead: to invent a new humanism for the future. 

MELA Postdoctoral Researcher for the Polish Team Dr Grażyna Baranowska was awarded a grant for research on memory laws in Turkey by the programme 'Blickwechsel: Contemporary Turkey Studies', funded by the Stiftung Mercator. She will be a Research Fellow in the Research Lab: Constitutional Politics in Turkey II, a project by the Institute for Social Sciences at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin in cooperation with the Law Faculty at Bilkent University in Ankara, from February to July 2019.

Academics of the Research Lab analyze the history of the state under the rule of law in Turkey and the many challenges it is facing from different disciplinary, methodological, and thematic angles. Dr Baranowska will be analyzing memory laws that protect the memory of undemocratic regimes against that of their victims, on the basis of a thorough analysis of the applications of Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, Article 354.1 of the Russian Penal Code, and relevant international standards.

MELA Postdoctoral Research Assistant Dr Nanor Kebranian has been awarded a grant by the Hrant Dink Foundation’s History and Memory Research Fund. Her project, entitled “Memory Laws and Transnational Resistance: Turkish-German Political Representatives and Armenian Genocide Recognition in Germany”, was one of three to receive the grant. Dr. Kebranian will be conducting a legal ethnography of transgenerational justice based on the involvement of German legislators with ethnic or national Turkish backgrounds in the 2016 German Parliamentary resolution recognising WWI-era atrocities against Ottoman-Armenians as genocide. On behalf of the entire MELA Team, we would like to congratulate Nanor on this achievement, and wish her all the best with her coming research project! 

Nanor Kebranian is Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Theory, History, and Human Rights for the MELA Project at the School of Law of Queen Mary University London. She completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford with fellowships from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and Oxford's Clarendon Fund. She joins Queen Mary after serving as Assistant Professor in Columbia University's Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies, where she researched, published, and taught on Ottoman history, literary studies, and human rights.

Mela PI Emanuela Fronza's new book in Spanish is finally out. El delito de negacionismo en Europa -  Análisis comparado de la legislación y la jurisprudencia (Buenos Aires: Hammurabi, 2018) offers an overview of the punishment of denialism through criminal provisions in Europe, with reference to European law, to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and a particular focus on the situation in Italy. The book was presented on 26 November at the Faculty of Law of the Uba University in Buenos Aires, where Emanuela Fronza discussed it with criminal lawyers Daniel Pastor (also author of the foreword) and Marco Scoletta. 

On 14 December, the cycle of Seminar on "Time, Memory and Criminal Law" in Bologna will come to an end. In these 19 seminars, criminal lawyers, constitutional lawyer, international lawyers, international criminal lawyers, historians, judges, prosecutors, attorney have underlined and discussed different aspects of the multiple relationships between time, memory and criminal law and the frictions between the flow of time, the protection of historical memory, the interest in criminal prosecutions and punishment. In the 20th seminar, Massimo Donini, professor of criminal law at the University of Modena, will offer a broader view of how the protection of historical memory by using criminal law. He will be introduced by Mela PI, Emanuela Fronza, and comments will follow by Massimo Caputo (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) and Elena Ferioli (Università di Bologna). 

The seminar will be in Italian.

MELA Postdoctoral Researcher for the Dutch Team Dr León Castellanos-Jankiewicz was awarded the inaugural David D. Caron Prize for his paper, “Nationality, Alienage and Early International Rights”, at the American Society of International Law 2018 Mid-Year Meeting, held in Los Angeles, California. His paper underlined the contributions of private international law in the development of the rights of aliens in the nineteenth century, subverting the preconception that the rights of non-nationals arose as a subset of public international law. The David D. Caron Prize is, as of this year, an award which honours the best paper submitted to the ASIL Research Forum by a current student, recent graduate, or young researcher. 

David D. Caron (1952-2018) was the President of the American Society of International Law from 2010-2012.  Judge Caron will be remembered through the award and fellowship in his name, both of which will continue to provide opportunities to young researchers in international law.

Dr Castellanos-Jankiewicz will be presented with the award at the American Society of International Law 2019 Annual Meeting. On behalf of the MELA Consortium, we would like to congratulate him for this outstanding achievement!

Dr León Castellanos-Jankiewicz joined the Dutch MELA team in September 2018. Previously, he was Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence.

On behalf of the MELA Consortium, we would like to express our warmest congratulations to Jeremie Bracka, winner of the Monash Law School Students’ Publication Prize for his chapter in Law and Memory: Towards Legal Governance of History (Cambridge 2017), co-edited by Dr Uladzislau Belavusau and Dr Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias. 

His work, entitled “From Banning Nakba to Bridging Narratives: The Collective Memory of 1948 and Transitional Justice for Israelis and Palestinians”, is a wonderful and timely contribution to both constitutional law regarding memory laws and transitional justice. It draws a full trajectory of memory laws in Israel, placing the Nakba Law into a wider historical context and critically unpacking it against the yardsticks of freedom of speech and minority protection. 

Law and Memory: Towards Legal Governance of History is currently available to order in hardcover. It is also available to pre-order in paperback for publication in December 2018.

In the next seminar of the Bologna series on “Time, Memory and Criminal Law”, MELA will be hosting Antoine Garapon: lawyer, former juvenile judge and current Secretary General of the Institut des Hautes Etudes sur la Justice. Garapon is the author of renowned books, particularly on issues related to the rituals of criminal justice, international crimes and terrorism. He is also a member of the French Memory Committee (Comité mémoriel). Composed of various personalities from the academic world (historians, scientists, sociologists and ministries of Justice, Armed Forces or Education) this Committee has been set up early 2018, especially to feed the discussion on how to commemorate the various terrorist attacks that France has suffered. On September 7th, the Memory Committee submitted its report “Terrorisme : faire face. Enjeux historiques et mémoriaux”.

Justice Garapon will be introduced by MELA PI, Prof. Emanuela Fronza and Prof. Gaetano Insolera (criminal lawyer – University of Bologna). Comments will follow by Prof. Carlo Guarnieri (political scientist – Univeristy of Bologna).

The seminar will be in French.

On Friday, October 19th, the MELA Project and the Asser Institute held a book launch of Law and Memory: Towards Legal Governance of History (Cambridge University Press, 2017, to be released in paperback in December 2018) by Uladzislau Belavusau and Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias in The Hague.

After a warm welcome from Prof. Janne Nijman, Academic Director of the Asser Institute, and Prof. Eric Heinze, Project Leader of the MELA Project, the first of two panels began. The first panel featured talks by the book’s editor, Dr. Uladzislau Belavusau, and Prof. Eric Heinze, author of the concluding chapter. It was chaired by MELA Researcher Dr. León Castellanos-Jankiewicz.

Senior Adviser to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities Bob Deen chaired the second panel, offering perspectives on each talk from his experience working at an intergovernmental organisation. Prof. Robert Kahn, Prof. Antoon De Baets, and Marina Bán spoke about various chapters of the book, with frequent reference to events that have occurred since its publication just a year ago. The panel was concluded by discussant Dr. Suryapratim Roy, who reviewed the book in June this year. Both panels were followed by questions from the audience, which began conversations carried over into the reception afterward.

The MELA Team in The Hague would like to express their gratitude to the Asser Institute for hosting our event, the speakers for their excellent contributions, and the audience for both their interest in the volume and their enthusiastic discussion.

On 24 Oct.,  renowned international lawyer and former ICTY and ICTR Judge, Prof. Flavia Lattanzi, will be giving a seminar on the history of international criminal justice, from the Treaty of Versailles to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Prof. Lattanzi was member of the Rome Conference for the establishment of an International Criminal Court (1998) and the ICC Preparatory Commission (1999-2002), Judge ad litem of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (2003-2006) and of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (2007-2016, where she, in particular, rendered a dissenting opinion in the Šešelj trial). She is also author and editor of numerous publications, inter alia on: the powers of the UN Security Council and its power to refer a situation to ICC; the distinction between war crimes and crimes against humanity; the diversification and fragmentation of International Criminal Law; law interpretation by International Criminal Tribunals; the ICC jurisdiction; primacy and complementarity of international criminal jurisdictions; the implementation of the Rome Statute by national legislators.

Prof. Lattanzi will be introduced by Prof. Giuseppe De Vergottini, constitutional lawyer (UniBo).

Prof. Lattanzi's lecture will be followed by comments of  Prof. Paolo Pezzino (Università di Pisa), historian and current president of the Istituto Nazionale Ferruccio Parri. Prof. Pezzino is an expert on history of war crimes during the German occupation of Italy and has been special consultant of the Military Court of La Spezia for the prosecution of Nazi crimes following the discovery of the Armoire of Shame.  

The MELA Seminars on "Time, Memory and Criminal Law" in Bologna have undergone some changes in their schedule. Here is the updated programme:

- 24 Oct.: Professor (and former ICTY and ICTR Judge) Flavia Lattanzi: La giustizia penale internazionale dal Trattato di Versailles allo Statuto di Roma (Italian)

- 19 Nov.: Professor Antoine Garapon: Memory, Law and Terrorism. The Case of France (English)

- 14 Dec.: Professor Massimo Donini: La tutela della memoria storica (Italian)

Sala degli Stemmi 1st Floor, V.Sa.

Memory laws enshrine state-approved interpretations of historical events. This phenomenon has been on the academic radar for a while. The recent volume “Law and Memory: Towards Legal Governance of History”, covering the widest number of jurisdictions so far, was published with Cambridge University Press (2017). It has marked the emergence of law and memory as a novel study area in comparative constitutional law. The book was edited by Dr. Uladzislau Belavusau (T.M.C. Asser Institute) and Dr. Aleksandra Gliszczynska-Grabias (Polish Academy of Sciences) within the framework of the EU-sponsored consortium ‘MELA’, dedicated to the study of various memory laws in European and comparative perspectives. The European University Institute (EUI) is organizing a book launch followed by a small workshop dedicated to the subject of this volume. 

Apart from gaining academic attention, memory laws have recently catapulted to the top of international news. In 2018, Poland adopted a notorious law that has gained significant coverage in media outlets worldwide, in particular regarding its attempt to criminalize ‘defamation of the Polish nation’ and the impact on the official Polish narrative of World War II. Likewise, the Ukrainian-Russian conflict has articulated problematic dimensions of the historical memory of the 20th century as both countries have introduced legal provisions encapsulating their contrasting historical positions. In parallel, a heated debate has arisen about confederate monuments in the United States. Furthermore, many states (most recently Germany and the Netherlands) have come up with soft laws recognizing Armenian genocide, while some of others (e.g. France, Switzerland, Greece) have even attempted to introduce criminal measures on the topic, similar to Holocaust denial prohibitions. The Hungarian Fundamental Law has even elevated memory politics and peculiar historical hagiography to the constitutional level. In this regard, a slow but steady decline of democracy and the rule of law in Central and Eastern Europe, in particular, has produced several measures indicating the centralization and nationalistic transformation of local memory politics. 

This workshop at the EUI aims at contextualizing memory laws, with book contributors elaborating on the unique circumstances and historical heritage of local politics of memory.

For organisational purposes, it is important that all those wishing to attend the event register online, by Thursday 11 October. 

Please see the full program here

After the summer break, the Bologna Mela seminars on "Time, Memory and Criminal Law" start again with prof. Mortiz Vormbaum (UWW Münster) on the topic "30 years after the fall of the Berlin wall - Transitional criminal justice in Germany". Prof. Vormbaum will be introduced by MELA PI Prof. Emanuela Fronza and comments by Prof. Stefania Parisi (Università di Napoli) will follow. The seminar will be in english. 

For the full program, please click here.

For more information and updates, please see our Facebook event here.

The conference is organized by 'Memory Laws in European and Comparative Perspective MELA' research consortium established between the Polish Academy of Sciences, Queen Mary University London, T.M.C. Asser Institute and University of Bologna, with support of EU Commission's HERA grant no.15.094.