Chantal Meloni
Chantal Meloni is Associate Professor in Criminal Law at the University of Milan, where she holds the course in International Criminal Law and the legal clinic in International Criminal Law.
After graduating in Law from the State University of Milan in 1998, she practiced law at the Pedrazzi-Mucciarelli law firm and was admitted to bar in 2001 at the Court of Appeal of Milan. In 2006, he completed his PhD in Italian and Comparative Criminal Law at the University of Pavia, discussing a thesis entitled “La responsabilità del comandante (command responsibility) nel diritto penale internazionale.” During her doctoral years, she spent long periods of research at the International Human Rights Law Institute of De Paul University in Chicago and Humboldt Universität (HU) in Berlin, where she specialized in international criminal law.
In 2006, she was a visiting professional at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, where she later worked at as an assistant judge on proceedings in Uganda, DRC and Darfur. In 2010-11, she spent several months at the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, Palestine, as part of a research project on right-to-life protection and accountability for war crimes in asymmetric conflicts. From 2011 to 2014, she held a research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the University of Berlin. Among her various stays abroad, she was a visiting fellow at Sydney University (Australia) in 2013 and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2022.
Since 2015, she has been working with the European Centre for Consitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) in Berlin, where she works on criminal liability for international crimes, victim representation, strategic litigation cases and universal jurisdiction. She has been included in the list of assistant lawyers at the International Criminal Court since 2008. She is a member of the board of the Franz von Liszt Institute for International criminal justice at the Humboldt University of Berlin; the executive committee of the International Scientific and Professional Advisory Council of the United Nations Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Program (ISPAC); and the board of the European Legal Support Center (Amsterdam).
In 2022, she was a member of the Palazzo-Pocar Commission in charge of drafting the Italian Code of International Crimes appointed by Minister Cartabia. She was designated national rapporteur for AIDP on autonomous weapons and criminal law (2022-24). She is part of several national and international research projects on criminal law, international criminal law and human rights.
In addition to her regular teaching activities, she gives frequent seminars and lectures on international criminal law at various Italian and foreign universities and is a speaker at numerous international conferences and workshops on international criminal law. She is a lecturer in several master's degrees, courses and summer schools, including the one at the Irish Center for Human Rights at the University of Galway, the Transnational Criminal Justice master's degree at the Universities of Berlin and Western Cape (South Africa), and the International Crime and Justice master's degree organized by UNICRI. She has taken part as a speaker in numerous conferences and seminars on criminal (international) law in Italy and abroad, including as an expert in round tables organized by the UN or hearings at the European Parliament.
She is the author of numerous articles and other academic publications, particularly on individual criminal responsibility for international crimes, protection of victims of torture and other international crimes, mechanisms of international justice, proceedings before the International Criminal Court and other international tribunals, and appeals before the European Court of Human Rights.
She published the book “Giustizia Universale? Tra gli Stati e la Corte penale internazionale: bilancio di una promessa” (Il Mulino: 2024) and the volume ‘Command Responsibility in International Criminal Law’ (T.M.C. Asser, 2010) and, as (co)editor, the volumes "Le questioni aperte della giustizia penale internazionale nella prospettiva interna" (Giuffrè, 2024), "Domesticating International Criminal Law" (Routledge, 2023) and "Is there a Court for Gaza?" (Asser/Springer, 2012).
She is editor of the observatory on the International Criminal Court and other international criminal tribunals for Rivista Italiana di Diritto e Procedura Penale. She also writes for non-scientific journals and participates in radio and television programs, Italian and foreign, as an expert on the subject.
