BOOK: Ignacio CZEGUHN & Jan THIESSEN (eds.), Dictatorship, Democracy, and Transitional Justice in Global Legal History [Schriften zur Rechtsgeschichte; 219] (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2023), 214 p., ISBN 978-3-428-18579-5

Book abstract:

The anthology presents the lectures given on the symposium »From Dictatorship to democracy« at the House of the Wannsee Conference on 13–14 September 2021. The aim of the organizers was to show what problems existed during the transition from dictatorship to democracy in several countries around the world. They all enacted laws or other measures to ensure that fundamental rights and the rule of law would resist anti-democratic ideologies, anti-Semitism, racism, and war crimes in the future. However, the legal system and law in these countries themselves often had their origins in dictatorship. Thus, there were and are obvious and hidden anti-democratic continuities that influence law and the legal system up to the present. Scientifics and jurists from Italy, Japan, Poland, Spain, South Africa, and Germany examine these continuities in their contributions.

Table of contents:

Ignacio Czeguhn and Jan Thiessen
Introduction

Ignacio Czeguhn
The Berlin Administration of Justice after 1945 – Factual and Personnel Continuities with the Nazi Justice System. Presentation of the Project and State of Research

Vittoria Calabrò
Continuità e discontinuità nel passaggio dalla dittatura alla democrazia: la vicenda del giurista

Gaspare Ambrosini
Bronisław Sitek and Albert Pielak: From Sovietization to Democratization of Justice in Poland (1944–1997)

Miho Mitsunari
Wartime Sexual Violence and War Responsibility: The »Comfort Women Issue« in Japan

José Antonio Pérez Juan
The Amnesty Measures of the Spanish Transition

Antonio Sánchez Aranda
Franco’s Regime. From Totalitarism to Authoritarism in its Repressive Model (April 1936–November 1975)

Ramón M. Orza Linares
La transición a la democracia en los países de América Central

Gerhard Kemp
From Dictatorship to Democracy in South Africa

Claudia Vanoni
Drei Jahre Antisemitismusbeauftragte der Generalstaatsanwaltschaft Berlin – ein Erfahrungsbericht

Samuel Salzborn
Kontinuität, Tradierung und Transformation des Antisemitismus

Jan Thiessen
The Treatment of the Nazi Past in Contemporary German Legal Education

Benjamin Lahusen
Learning from History? Current Developments in the Restitution of Nazi-Confiscated Property

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