The Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights in the Area of Europe’s Totalitarian Past : Selected Examples

Responsibility for negation of international crimes / edited by Patrycja Grzebyk ; translated by Mateusz Matuszczak. Warszawa : Wydawnictwo Instytutu Wymiaru Sprawiedliwości, 2020, s. 85-92.

Wolności wypowiedzi pod rządami populistów

Wokół kryzysu praworządności, demokracji i praw człowieka : księga jubileuszowa Profesora Mirosława Wyrzykowskiego / redakcja naukowa Adam Bodnar i Adam Ploszka. Warszawa : Wolters Kluwer, 2020, s. 542-558.

Orzecznictwo Europejskiego Trybunału Praw Człowieka wobec totalitarnej przeszłości Europy : wybrane przykłady

Odpowiedzialność za negowanie zbrodni międzynarodowych / pod redakcją Patrycji Grzebyk. Warszawa : Wydawnictwo Instytutu Wymiaru Sprawiedliwości, 2020, s. 81-88.

Redakcja:

Constitutionalism Under Stress : Essays in Honour of Wojciech Sadurski

Współredaktorstwo: Belavusaǔ, Uladzìslaǔ

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2020

ISBN 9780198864738

368 stron.

The Remarkable Rise of ‘Law and Historical Memory’ in Europe : Theorizing Trends and Prospects in the Recent Literature

Współautorstwo: Belavusaǔ, Uladzìslaǔ

Review article of: - Defendin nazis in postwar Czechoslovakia: The life of K. Resler, Defence Consuel Ex Officio of K.H. Frank by Jakub Drápal (Prague: Karolinum Press, 2018, 200 pp., £19.00) - Communists and theit victims: The quest for justice in the Czech Republic by Roman David (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018, 280 pp., £69.00). Recent European literature on memory laws agrees that, despite the multiple forms of such laws (punitive and declarative, constitutional and administrative, legislative and judicial, and so on), there has been a sharp increase in their adoption in Europe. Furthermore, their mushrooming in CEE has been intertwined with a marked decline of rule of law in the region. ‘Illiberal democracies’26 are particularly eager to revert to populist identity formation under the guise of memory politics, mainstreaming nationalist historiography while marginalizing and, at times, suppressing alternative historical memories of minorities. Likewise, the controversial decision of the ECtHR in Perinçek v. Switzerland has recently sparked unprecedented attention to invoking law in the context of historical memory and various inevitable hierarchies between the memory of the Holocaust and other genocides. During the 1980s and 1990s, and even partially in the early 2000s, legislative memory provisions and historical trials in Europe and elsewhere were largely a matter of targeting revisionist and denialist narratives about the Shoah, the Armenian genocide, colonial atrocities, and so on, raising painful questions about the past and its lessons for a hopefully more emancipated and tolerant future. In contrast, since the 2000s, and especially since 2010, memory laws have been increasingly converted into instruments ensuring mnemonic security and supposedly counteracting disinformation in a number of countries in CEE, to fortify their sovereignty in light of, in particular, Russian propaganda. The legal rehabilitation of Stalinism, along with the white-washing of Soviet expansionism during that period, has been well described by Koposov. Putin's Russia has adopted a dangerous rhetoric, stirring up (post-)Soviet imperialism to cover up military interventions in the region via a peculiar vindication of communism – increasingly contradictory in light of its parallel rehabilitation of the ‘good tsar’ killed by the Bolsheviks and the revival of religious Orthodox obscurantism, once successfully suppressed by the same communists. Thus, one of the major findings of the recent literature is that – despite the birth of the terminology and major modes of legal governance of history in Western Europe – the current epicentre of memory laws is situated in CEE. Moreover, since the 2000s a different type of memory legislation has been taking shape. The earlier – self-inculpatory – memory laws had the naïve yet noble purpose of defending historical truth and the dignity of Holocaust victims. The recent – self-exculpatory – wave of CEE memory laws should be considered in light of memory wars, whereby a number of countries in the region have advanced their ontological security by promulgating legislation that fortifies simplistic binary narratives. Such dichotomous narratives usually portray selected nations as victims par excellence of gross atrocities. These narratives prevent the nations from reflecting critically on their own twentieth-century histories. The acceleration of dystopian memory politics goes hand in hand with the deterioration of democratic standards in the CEE region. In particular, Hungary and Poland stand accused of democratic backsliding by the EU institutions. Furthermore, concerned with the idealized visions of the Stalinist past being reanimated in Russia along with the uncritical view of Soviet atrocities in the ex-communist bloc, the Baltic states, Poland, and Ukraine have been provoked to legislate in defence of certain simplistic historical narratives. It is, therefore, fair to predict that future scholarship in this field of law and society, dealing with legal governance of historical memory in Europe, will move from assessing memory laws exclusively in light of their compatibility with human rights, such as freedom of speech (especially in the post-colonial context of Western European countries and genocide denialism wider than the Holocaust), to a broader perspective regarding democracy and rule of law (especially in the CEE region). The literature on memory laws in Europe will further position these laws against rising nationalism and populism, assessing their self-inculpatory and self-exculpatory elements, and into the broader paradigm of ‘responsible history’. This paradigm will have to carefully explore various defences and critiques for the legal engagement with historical memory, from the right to truth to protection against disinformation and mnemonic propaganda.

[Recenzja: Uladzislau Belavusau, Kristin Henrard (eds.), EU Anti-Discrimination Law beyond Gender, Hart Publishing, Oxford 2018, 392 pp., ISBN: 978-1-50-991501-9

International and Comparative Law Quarterly 2020, t. 69, nr 2, s. 500-502.

Introduction : Academic Legacy of Wojciech Sadurski, Rule of Law, and Mnemonic Constitutionalism in Central and Eastern Europe

Współautorstwo: Belavusaǔ, Uladzìslaǔ

Constitutionalism Under Stress : Essays in Honour of Wojciech Sadurski / edited by Uladzislau Belavusau and Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2020, s. 1-18.

This Introduction reflects on the significance of Wojciech Sadurski’s scholarship on comparative constitutionalism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It links his legacy to the rise of mnemonic constitutionalism in post-communist countries in CEE. The mushrooming of memory laws (various forms of—often nationalistic—governance of historical memory) in CEE has taken place in the context of the region’s democratic decline. Countries such as Hungary and Poland are currently in the epicentre of an EU backlash for violation of rule of law standards. The recent wave of memory laws in CEE goes to the heart of constitutional visions and should be analysed in conjunction with their specific historical and present socio-political context marking the rise of illiberal democracies. The wave of mnemonic constitutionalism in CEE fulfils a different self-exculpatory function in projecting a victimhood of states and serving as a shield and sword in the context of memory wars in CEE.