From consultancy report to academic paper

• Department of Law

This presentation by Jean Monnet Fellow Bronwen Manby will explore the differences between writing as a lawyer, a consultant, and an academic. Together with the audience, the working group will discuss how to switch between different professional roles and their respective languages, and how to adjust the presentation of our research findings accordingly. As such, this presentation will be of great interest to anyone hoping to work at the boundary between academia and practice.

The right to a nationality is unique among other rights set out in the international human rights treaties in having no meaning outside of an international legal order made up of states. At the same time, the importance of the right to a nationality as the foundation for other human rights is rapidly increasing, as requirements to prove legal identity and immigration status become ever more pervasive. Because nationality is defined and created by national laws, legal remedies will almost always be needed for those excluded from recognition.  

This presentation will consider the particular role of strategic litigation in shaping those remedies, especially in challenging citizenship law as the last permitted field for discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, or religion. It will argue that more progress has been achieved in challenging state discretion than is generally realised, especially in relation to substantive discrimination in law – and not only when statelessness would otherwise result. There is less progress in relation to the procedural elements of the law; nevertheless important principles have been established on the discriminatory impact of procedural requirements. 

Bronwen Manby is a Jean Monnet Fellow at the EUI Robert Schumann Centre for Advanced Studies for the academic year 2022-23; she is also Africa coordinator for the RSCAS GLOBALCIT programme. She has written extensively on the right to nationality, comparative citizenship law, and statelessness, especially in Africa. Bronwen earns a living as a consultant, including supporting UNHCR on its global campaign to end statelessness, and is developing an increasing focus on identification systems. She previously worked for Lawyers for Human Rights in South Africa, and a decade each for Human Rights Watch and the Open Society Foundations.