2016 Graduate Student Conference
Location: School of International Studies, via T. Gar 14, Trento
Tuesday 18 October 2016, 14:00 - 17:00 Room 001 (Ground Floor)
Presentation of the Research Projects by the Second Semester PhD Students
14:00 - 14:30 GIULIA FROSECCHI
"The Crisis of Labour Law and the Role of the Constitutional Jurisprudence: The Italian and Spanish Constitutional Courts”
It is quite uncontroversial that labour law as it was originally framed in Western countries is not able to properly regulate employment relations in the current economic and productive scenario. The academic debate around this issue, which has both legal and social implications, is remarkable and rich in food for thought. Several theories and approaches have been suggested in order to overcome the crisis of traditional labour law and to determine which new employment patterns and norms should be adopted to reconcile labour legislation with the current economic, social, and political context. However, the literature has not yet examined what has been the contribution of the Constitutional jurisprudence over the recent decades to the reconstruction of labour law.
The overall purpose of this project is to assess the jurisprudence of the Italian and Spanish Constitutional Courts, with the specific aim of identifying how legal arguments of the legal reasoning developed by each of these Courts can contribute to the renewal of labour law in their respective legal systems, but also in general terms, given the common global tendencies that characterize this legal field. In particular, the jurisprudence on labour reforms which had the effect of shrinking workers’ rights will be evaluated. The legal reasoning of the Constitutional jurisprudence will be analysed paying special attention to the constitutional balancing of rights and interests. This element will be addressed by drawing on the work of Jacco Bamhoff who evaluates balancing as a discourse, rather than a legal technique, with emphasis on the deep differences among legal systems.
14:30 - 15:00 MICHELE D’ALESSANDRO
“Unpacking the Model: The Role of the African Union in Peace Operations”
An African model of peace operations is emerging. At policy-level analysis, this model is built on the 'strategic partnership' between the African Union (AU) and the United Nations (UN), where the AU has a 'comparative advantage' in stabilization operations, while the UN has the resources and tools to consolidate the peace. This neat 'division of labour', however, not only relegates peacebuilding to a 'post-conflict' area, but it also underestimates the recent developments of the AU in deploying police and civilian elements within broader and more sophisticated mandates. Following this rigid model, therefore, very limited attention has been dedicated to the role and the impact of African actors outside military intervention.
The proposed project aims to unpack the current model of partnership between the AU and the UN in order to understand the origins, the transformations and the implications of 'partnership peacekeeping' vis-à-vis the role of the African Union. The research, therefore, has a twofold purpose: theoretically, it will investigate the interest, ideological, historical and power elements of the model of African peace operations, and the consequent implications on the role of the AU. Empirically, it will examine under-researched areas of work where the African Union is already engaging in peacebuilding activities within recent multidimensional operations. To this scope, an in-depth analysis of the documents and statements of the AU and its officials will be conducted, and complemented with semi-structured interviews. In the era of partnership peacekeeping, the nature and structure of peace operations in Africa need to be further investigated.
15:00 – 15:30 PIERGIUSEPPE PARISI
“System Complementarity: Ways to Enhance International Criminal Justice Effectiveness through Non-Judicial Fact-Finding”
The international criminal justice system is often accused of being ineffective. Its self-proclaimed goals are too broad to be achieved even by a functioning domestic criminal justice system, let alone by international criminal courts and tribunals that have to face resource, political, temporal, and geographical constraints. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court has endeavoured to remedy these structural weaknesses by introducing the relational notion of complementarity, thereby allocating the primary responsibility for giving effect to international criminal law on the states.
However, international prosecutions are not the only means for dispensing international criminal justice. The move from the traditional fact-finding function to tasks partially overlapping with the goals of international criminal law in their mandates has shown that the role of UN-dispatched commissions of inquiry cannot be overlooked. International justice simply cannot afford to ignore these commissions.
The proposed research investigates how commissions of inquiry contribute to the effectiveness of international criminal law by deconstructing it into its different components. Drawing on the existing literature on the effectiveness of criminal justice and the cooperative model of interaction between non-judicial fact-finding and international courts, this research seeks to identify criteria for assessing the impact of commissions of inquiry on the performance of international criminal justice.
This impact assessment provides the basis for examining the role of fact-finding missions vis-à-vis complementarity in relation to the broader international criminal justice system, and underpins the theorisation of the innovative notion of ‘system complementarity’.
15:30 – 15:45 BREAK
15:45 – 16:15 HANA BREDIKOVÁ
“Ending Civil Wars: The Role of Neutral Third-party involvement in Peace-making”
The conventional wisdom holds that third parties intervene in conflicts to manage inter-ethnic tensions, reduce the duration of wars and increase the odds of negotiated settlements. This proposal challenges the notion that all third-party involvements induce this effect on peace-making processes. Although, third parties do intervene in conflict to change its course, this has not always resulted in a negotiated settlement or lasting peace. This proposal investigates the role of neutral third-party involvement in shaping the conditions for peaceful outcomes.
More attention has been paid to an increased number of civil conflicts that have ended with negotiated settlements. It has been argued that this shift is due to the increased ability of the international community to engage in conflict management efforts. The proposed research will examine how conflict management efforts have affected civil conflicts to achieve negotiated settlements. This proposal suggests that third-party involvement might have a varying effect on the formation and implementation of agreements.
The aim of this project is to investigate the role of neutral third parties in shaping the conditions for post-conflict settlements. Drawing from the bargaining theory of war, this proposal will first reconstruct the conditions conducive for third parties to intervene. This step will help clarify the problematic issues and moral hazard third parties face during the interventions. As a second step, this project will investigate an array of conflict management strategies and provide a more detailed analysis of which strategies are best set to anchor peace in war-torn societies. To do so, this project will extend existing data sets to provide for more in-depth and accurate measurements of third-party involvement in order to establish the effects on a peace-making compromise.
16:15 – 16:45 CHIARA TEA ANTONIAZZI
“Making Strasbourg Norms and Judgments Effective: The (Potential) Role of National Human Rights Institutions”
The overload of the European Court of Human Rights has triggered several reforms that have variously affected the institutional and procedural framework of the Council of Europe (CoE). Recently, in light of the evident inability of these measures to drastically reduce the number of applications submitted to the Court, increasing attention has been paid to the issue of national implementation of the Court’s judgments as well as of the European Convention itself. The proposed research suggests that there exist domestic bodies which are ideally placed to enhance this implementation process – i.e., National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs). While these institutions, where they are in place, already interact with CoE bodies, it appears that considerable scope for development exists.
The proposed project will thus survey the activities which European NHRIs currently carry out within the CoE with a view to mapping their level of engagement. On the other hand, in order to ascertain whether other ways of collaboration with CoE bodies could be additionally pursued, a comparative approach will be adopted, and the participation of NHRIs within the UN forum, as well as within non-European regional human rights systems, will be examined.
The aim is to determine whether and to what extent greater involvement of European NHRIs within the CoE framework could potentially contribute to improving the domestic implementation of the Convention and of the Court’s judgments. To answer this question, an examination of the annual reporting of all European NHRIs will be conducted, and complemented with an in-depth analysis based on document review and interviews with stakeholders.
