Jenny Orlando-Salling is a PhD Fellow in Law at the Centre of Excellence for International Courts and Governance (iCourts), University of Copenhagen. Her current research engages critical and historical approaches to EU legal studies, with a specific focus on (post-)colonialism and constitutionalism. She holds an LLM from the University of Copenhagen, an MSc in Politics and Government in the European Union from the London School of Economics and Political Science as well as an LLB with Honours from University College London. She has previously been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Milan (Department of Legal History), Princeton University (Department of History) and the University of Cambridge (Faculty of Law).

Before joining the University of Copenhagen, Jennifer was Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Malta in Egypt as well as Nicolaidis Representative (Foreign Affairs) at the Permanent Representation of Malta to the EU during its Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2017. She has additionally worked as a trainee at the European Parliament, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Jenny lectures undergraduate students at the Faculty of Law in Criminology and Global Challenges in International Law, and is open to supervising BA and LLM theses in a variety of subjects. 

Jenny has also been selected as a re:constitution fellow for the period 2024/2025. Her PhD project is part-funded by the TESS Scholarship (Malta) for the period 2020-2024.

Keywords: European constitutionalism, colonial constitutionalism, constitutional studies, comparative constitutionalism, constitutional history, critical historical approaches, coloniality, post-colonialism, decolonial approaches, core-periphery, memory and identity, rule of law; histories of the rule of law.

The ‘Other(s)’ Within: Constitution(alism) and Coloniality in the EU Legal Order – Legal Stories from Malta

Who does European Union law see, and crucially, who does it not see? Whose histories have been internalised into its constitution and constitutionalism, and whose have been left behind? Genealogical anxiety is not an unfamiliar shadow in EU law: its history has, at best, dithered on the central place and role of Empires at its founding constitutional moments and beyond. The conspicuous absence of contention with colonialism and imperialism is equally perceptible when contending with Empires within Europe itself. Reflecting on liminality in Europe and offering a critical re-reading of the EU’s legal history, this thesis presents a collection of legal stories from Malta. Malta was granted de jure independence from Britain in 1964 following over 160 years of colonial rule, only becoming a de facto sovereign state in 1979 when British troops left the island. Today, Malta sits amongst a handful of former British colonies in the EU - which it acceded to in 2004 - remaining one of two EU Member States that form part of the Commonwealth of Nations.

This collection of articles offers snapshots into European colonialism's enduring impact on the Maltese legal system. Foregrounding Empire, with Malta as a laboratory for this analysis, the articles deliberate two gaps the overall project identifies: First, by excavating, deconstructing, and reconstructing European legal history, it contends with missing colonial histories within the European legal order. Offering a view from below, it revisits or unearths archival material to do so. Second, offering examples of extant coloniality, it views legacies and logics of colonialism in the present by contributing a different perspective on contentious issues within EU law today. Moving through the analyses using postcolonial and decolonial approaches, adding texture to Treaty-mandated equality that presupposes a dialogical relationship between European and constitutive Member States’ constitutionalism(s), the thesis views EU law and legal studies as a site for deliberation and contestation towards reconstruction.