Lecture | Public lecture and Discussion
Citizenship as Aristocratic Justice
- Date
- Tuesday 29 September 2026
- Time
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.23
Abstract
The concept of citizenship has come full circle. Struggling against irrational blood aristocracy one nation at a time, it elevated the key problem it was summoned to solve to the global level, turning it into the DNA of global law and politics. In the process it has installed one dominant principle of global justice: blood aristocracy. The resulting world is not neutral and discriminates by design based on a criterion which would never be accepted as constitutionally sound in any national system outside a handful of archaic regimes not preoccupied with dignity and justice. This sheds new light on some of the key debates in contemporary politics. The lecture will be based on a forthcoming piece in the Brown Journal of World Affairs. The event might be of particular interest to European Union Studies students.
About the speaker
Prof. Dimitry Vladimirovich Kochenov is the head of Rule of Law research at CEU Democracy Institute and Visiting Professor at Peking University School of Transnational Law in Shenzhen and LUISS Guido Carli in Rome. He is engaged with citizenship, justice and power in law most broadly conceived. His Citizenship (MIT 2019) has been translated into several languages and reviewed in the NYRB. First tenured in Groningen, Dimitry taught citizenship at Oxford, Princeton and the College of Europe, advised governments including the Dutch and Maltese and served as a founding co-chairman of the Investment Migration Council (Geneva). His new monograph Euro-soteriology against Constitutionalism is forthcoming with Bloomsbury next year.
