Writing for Verfassungsblog, Eric Heinze, Professor of Law and Humanities at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), discusses Western history, arguing that it is “largely a history of writing its own history”. He explains that “most of what we call ‘History’ consists of ‘histories’ – events situated in time and place to instruct contemporaries and posterity.” Professor Heinze draws on the Enlightenment and post-colonial theory before moving on to the post-Cold War world, which has witnessed a “flurry of scholarship about law and historical memory”. He concludes that once we assign legal standing to public discourse as a condition for both democracy and human rights, the field of law and historical memory can come to assume a premier place among the objects of legal analysis. Read the full blog.