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Cegesoma

General Objectives

The two world wars put pressure on the judicial systems, during the wars as well as after the Liberation. Under occupation, two judicial systems coexisted, causing political and judicial problems which had to be solved primarily by the judiciary. After the wars, collaborators had to be brought before the judge. The massive scale of the operation and the political and economic implications put the judicial system under constraint. WP 5 dealt with these phases in the history of the Belgian judicial system. The CEGESOMA was attributed two doctoral students. They researched key aspects of this crisis, taking into account previous and current research.

Workprogramme

WP5a: The Attitude of Belgian Magistrates during the First World War

Drs. Mélanie Bost dealt with the Belgian judiciary in the First World War. Initially, the focus was on the question of the relations between the judicial authorities and the German occupant, centred on key areas of conflict. After researching various legal sources, the nuances and differentiated behaviors among the judges (cooperation, resistance, varying concepts of patriotism, etc...) became apparent.

• The study of the determining factors of these various attitudes led to consider some "internal" even intra-Belgian factors to the magistracy, in addition to the contextual and the temporal factors.
• The relationships between judges and relations of those judges with the other actors from the judicial and the public spheres (network side), like the bars, the representatives of other authorities and the civil society appeared to be the most relevant.
• The weight of procedures and the relationship of Belgian judges with domestic and international law played a crucial role also.

The socio-political character of the analysis was built upon the use of prosopography and the quest for the existence of collective practices. Ultimately, if the first German occupation of Belgium constitutes a very relevant case to learn more about the Belgian judiciary, it also represents a decisive episode in the history of justice and its place in society. Therefore, the research went back and forth between the period of occupation and the postwar period. This helped to measure the impact of this crisis on the judicial body, the central question of WP 5, especially in terms of powers.

WP5b: The Repression of Collaboration after the Second world War

Drs. Lawrence Van Haecke studied the activities of the military justice after 1944 to 1947, using the rich archives of the office of the chief military prosecutor, which have not been used for research up till now. Research on punishment of collaboration was primarily based on normative sources and on the outcome of the process. This project looked at the judicial apparatus and actors and the relationship with the other components of the political system and the interaction of the activities of the judiciary with societal developments. A central question of this project concerned the link between the post 1918 and post 1944 punishment of collaboration. This link is one of the specific features of the Belgian case. Therefore, Lawrence Van Haecke studied also in depth the legal precedents in the 1930s and the preparation of the repression by the London government.

As a historian, Lawrence Van Haecke aimed for a broad diachronically and synchronically contextualized research:

• The diachronic aspect of the research showed itself in the study of the governmental work during the thirties and the use of the First World War as an example for the policies of the different Belgian governments dealing with punishment of collaboration in the 1940s.
• The synchronic context was made apparent through the use of mostly France and the Netherlands as comparative material, answering the question if there was, whether or not a Belgian specificity, due to the impact of the post 1918 punishment of collaboration.