Tracing Europe's Imperial Footprints: Decoloniality and the Rule of Law - A Maltese Case Study
In 2024, Malta will commemorate sixty years since gaining independence from Britain after nearly two centuries of colonial rule, and twenty years since becoming a member state of the European Union.
Successive post-independence governments in Malta would construct the state on top of a carefully cultivated system of colonial administration. This project will investigate how imperialism shaped the rule of law in Malta using a three-part strategy - excavation, deconstruction and reconstruction. First, it will look at its development in a critical phase of British colonial rule; deployed as part of the toolkit of colonial governance. Second, it will analyze the afterlives of imperialism – its living realities – on the Maltese political and legal system. Lastly, it will put forward reconstructive recommendations by suggesting avenues for reform and reckoning at a national and European level. The project seeks to contribute to debates on the rule of law in the European Union by taking a decolonial approach and offering an otherwise uncommon perspective from its Southern semiperiphery. It heeds growing calls to contend with the critical approaches blindspot in EU legal studies, deploying a variety of qualitative research methods to achieve its aims.
