Carna Pistan

Columbia University | CU · Harriman Institute

This article focuses on the construction of European memory and identity within the EU integration processes. The aim is to provide some critical reflections on the EU politics of remembrance by exploring the grand European narratives through the evolution of the EU law. In particular, the article argues that equating Nazism and Communism as totali...

The article opens by addressing the complex role of constitutionalism in democracy-building processes, and argues that although from an ideal perspective constitutionalism should guide democracy on the road to its consolidation, this has been not always the case. To prove such an assumption, the article introduces as an example the “third wave” of...

The article is devoted to the constitutional development in Central Asia. It starts by exploring the constitution-making process which oc- curred in the region during the initial democratic impulse of the early 1990s, and focuses then on the ways in which formally democratic Con- stitutions have been manipulated within the region to serve authorita...

The article focuses on the recently imposed genocide denial ban in BiH. It is argued, in particular, that the imposed law represents a potentially powerful instrument to combat an alarming normalization of genocide denial, and a shameful glorification of war criminals, but it is, however, unlikely that an internationally imposed memory law can cont...

This policy memo focuses on constitutional politics of memory within the context of recent Russia’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine. The aim is to show the negative consequences memory-making through the Constitution may have, including the creation of an explicit basis for legitimizing armed conflicts.

In the heart of Europe, a troubling commemoration persists. On May 18, Croatia observed a remembrance day that honors the memory of those killed in Bleiburg in 1945 – a group that included members of the Ustasha movement, a Nazi collaborationist faction during WWII. Established by law, this memorial day controversially depicts Ustasha as fighters f...

After unveiling a monument to the genocide denier Peter Handke a few years ago, local authorities in Banja Luka – the largest city of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity – are now building a massive monument to the soldiers of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) who died in the war of 1992–95. The memorial site in Banja Luka is not the first de...

This article focuses on the nexus between wartime sexual violence and genocide in relation to the 1992-95 Bosnian war. It first discusses the nature of sexual violence in the Bosnian conflict through the lens of the feminist debate about «genocidal rape». It then explores how sex crimes may function as a constituent act of genocide under internatio...

Il Capitolo mira ad individuare i miti e i simboli posti a fondamento dell’identità nazionale e della legittimazione degli Stati nei Paesi dei Balcani occidentali. L’intento è quello di spiegare il contesto della loro creazione, il significato che assumono e lo scopo che perseguono, nonché l’impatto che esercitano sulla sfera politico-giuridica. Un...

Il presente Capitolo mira a ricostruire gli odierni sistemi di giurisdizione costituzionale nei Paesi dei Balcani occidentali sotto un duplice profilo. Da una parte, esamina i precedenti storici di controllo di costituzionalità rinvenibili nel sistema jugoslavo di giustizia costituzionale; dall’altra, l’indagine è concentrata sulla rinascita della...

The article focuses on the relationship between mnemonic engineering, nation-building and minority rights protection in the Republic of Croatia through the lengths of the country’s 1990 Constitution. It argues, in particular, that the Constitution – despite the requirements of EU con- ditionality Croatia had to fulfill before the EU membership – st...

The article offers a comparative perspective on the management of Covid-19 health crisis in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia. It focuses, in particular, on the reconstruction of different reactions taken by the four countries to contain the spread of the disease through an exam of constitutional provisions devoted to the state of e...

Il presente contributo mira ad esaminare l’impatto dell’immigrazione (sia internazionale che quella europea) sul sistema di welfare state britannico. A tal fine si propone, innanzitutto, una riflessione sull’affermazione dei diritti sociali nel Regno Unito attraverso la ricostruzione delle diverse tappe evolutive del welfare state inglese volta ad...

The article discusses a disturbing phenomenon, which is termed as pseudo constitutionalism. The latter is defined through the article as a practice in which constitutionalism is used to undermine democracy itself and move toward authoritarian rule. By using Central Asia as a case study-notably known as the most repressive region of the post-Soviet...

The article focuses on 2017 constitutional reform in Kazakhstan within the context of 2019 resignation of the first and only Kazakh President, Nursultan Nazarbayev. The aim is to show that Nazarbayev's decision to resign represents a move of a smart authoritarianism to consolidate a power structure formally introduced in 2017. It is claimed, in par...

The article deals with freedom of expression, including the right to satire, in the Hungarian and Croatian legal systems. The aim is to recon- struct the changing normative framework, including the evolution of the case law in order to outline the different paths that the implementation of freedom of expression has followed in the two legal orders,...

https://constitutionnet.org/news/2017-constitutional-reform-kazakhstan-increasing-democracy-without-political-pluralism

Il volume propone una ricostruzione in chiave sia sincronica che diacronica dei sistemi di giustizia costituzionale dei paesi dell'Europa centro-orientale e dell'area ex-sovietica, offrendo in tal modo un'analisi sistematica della giurisdizione costituzionale in 27 paesi diversi. L'indagine ripercorre lo sviluppo del concetto di controllo di costit...

Di fronte alle tragedie che hanno accompagnato il crollo jugoslavo, inserire nel titolo di una relazione sulla dissoluzione della Jugoslavia il neologismo jugonostalgija, presupponendo in tal modo l’esistenza di un sentimento di nostalgia nei confronti della scomparsa della Jugoslavia titoista potrebbe apparire, oltre che provocatorio, una contradd...