EUTopia CoLeCo Legal History: Collective and Individual Rights in Legal History

The EUTopia Project enabled us to think about how rights emerged and were negotiated between states and minorities. Through explorations of Haitian and Chilean minority rights, we demonstrated the significance of a state’s authority in the Age of Revolutions and the Twentieth century and analysed the state’s prerogative for making citizens during state and nation formation.   However, it is important to note that the classification of minorities changed throughout time. In the Cold War era, the category of ‘minority’ encompassed politically marginalised communities and the victims of gendered discrimination. The 1970s can be seen as a watershed moment for transnational organising by NGOs and the recourse to international instruments, in the face of "sovereign emergencies" in South America (1) ;   with particular focus on Argentina and Brazil. This shift meant human rights became an important language for states and civil society activists making recourse to the law (see examp...

Hello ! We are students of Cergy Paris University in the same second year of Master’s of Human Rights Law and Fundamental Liberties. Our university had the pleasure to host the EUtopia Event in February and to welcome the students and Professors from European universities, who participated in the project. Why did you join ? Our Professor, Mrs. Argyriadis-Kervegan, gave us a course about the History of Minorities Status and offered us to prepare a research project on the Persecution of Jews in France during the Second World War and the German Occupation period. This was on a voluntary basis and we agreed to take part because of how interesting the topics were, along with the source material. Meeting with other students from different countries to hear the results of their own projects also seemed like a very good opportunity to widen our horizons. What are you working on ? (various short testimonials can come in here) We splitted into different groups and each one worked on a specific ...

The Paris Peace Conference changed the political map of Europe and concluded the process of replacing the centuries-old monarchies with modern nation-states, but which unsurprisingly opened the Pandora box of minority issues. It therefore shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana, where we come from, was founded on August 26th 1919. However, what might come as a surprise is that the first faculty meeting of its founding fathers was held in Paris as they were all members of the delegation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Thus, Paris is not only the very city where the story of our faculty started, but also the very origin of the topic of our research, as the borders were redrawn at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. It was through the spirit of the city which sought to bring peace and freedom to all Europeans that we recognized what the next steps in our research will be. As a group of student tutors for Legal History we were invit...

Depending on the point of view, Paris is either seen as Brussels in big, or Brussels as ‘petit-Paris’. In this blogpost we, the EUTopia students from Brussels, guide you through Paris from the viewpoint of a small minority in a very big city. We write this blogpost, in true EUTopian spirit, in three different languages, providing thoughts on engaging encounters, thought-provoking presentations and winding walks through Paris. The song 'Bruxelles je t’aime', by the Brussels-born-but-living-in-Paris singer Angèle, serves as a welcome guide.   Day one: quiet before the storm? Not in Paris! Et sûrement que dès ce soir le ciel couvrira une tempête Mais après l'orage, avec des bières, les gens feront la fête En of het Peak Event ons aansprak. Een dik uur Thalys, een korte metrotrip en twee keer rond het indrukwekkende Monument à la République stonden we naast studenten uit Warwick, Ljubljana en Barcelona. Wanneer het regent in Parijs, druppelt het in Brussel. Maar wann...