Law and Memory

Uladzislau Belavusau is Senior Researcher in European Law at the T. M. C. Asser Institute (the Hague), Universiteit van Amsterdam. Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias is Senior Researcher in Human Rights at the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

• Acknowledgements; Contributors; Introduction: memory laws: mapping a new subject in comparative law and transitional justice Uladzislau Belavusau and Aleksandra Gliszcyńska-Grabias; Part I. International Law: 1. The UN Human Rights Committee's view of the past Antoon De Baets; 2. The role of international criminal tribunals in shaping the historical accounts of genocides Marina Aksenova; 3. The 'right to truth' in international law: the 'last utopia'? Patricia Naftali; Part II. European Law (Council of Europe and European Union): 4. Kononov vs Latvia as the ontological security struggle over remembering the Second World War Maria Mälksoo; 5. Testing the 'uniqueness': denial of the Holocaust vs denial of other crimes before the European Court of Human Rights Paolo Lobba; 6. Legislating history: the European Union and the denial of international crimes Luigi Cajani; Part III. National Perspectives within European Union: 7. Challenging historical facts and national truths: an analysis of cases from France and Greece Ioanna Tourkochoriti; 8. Legal silences and the memory of Francoism in Spain Alfons Aragoneses; 9. Politics of public knowledge in dealing with the past: postcommunist experiences and some lessons from the Czech Republic Jiří Přibáň; 10. Adjudication in deportation cases of Latvia and international law Ieva Miluna; 11. Judging the conducător: fascism, communism and legal discontinuity in post-war Romania Cosmin Sebastian Cercel; 12. Dealing with the past in and around the fundamental law in Hungary Miklós Könczöl; 13. On the politics of resentment, mis-memory and constitutional fidelity. The demise of the Polish overlapping consensus? Tomasz Tadeusz Koncewicz; Part IV. Perspectives beyond European Union: 14. Defending Stalinism by means of criminal law: Russia, 1995–2014 Nikolay Koposov; 15. Cutting the umbilical cord: the narrative of the national past and future in Ukrainian de-communization policy Lina Klymenko; 16. Banning genocide denial – should geography matter? Robert A. Kahn; 17. 'From banning Nakba to bridging narratives': the collective memory of 1948 and transitional justice for Israelis and Palestinians Jeremie Bracka; 18. Historical revisionism and the settler state: the Canadian experience Michael Morden; 19. Defense of democracy and the preservation of collective memory through criminal legislation: the challenges of reconciliation in Peru Salvador Herencia Carrasco; Epilogue: beyond 'memory laws': towards a general theory of law and historical discourse Eric Heinze; Index.

'The law commonly drifts between an obligation to forget and a duty to remember, vigorously endorsed and imposed through the policing of legal truths. The editors of this book offer a spectacular walk down memory lane and a unique must-have to anyone interested in how law shapes historical imagination, populated with selected victims and imposed heroes of the past.' Dimitry Kochenov, Chair in EU Constitutional Law at the University of Groningen, Faculty of Law