National Heroes by Law: The Legal Enactment of National Heroism in Contemporary Romania

In post-communist Romania, Parliament has developed a distinctive form of memory legislation that formally designates historical figures as “Heroes (and Martyrs) of the Romanian Nation.” Emerging from earlier laws commemorating the victims of the 1989 Revolution and prohibiting the public glorification of fascist figures, this legislation introduces heroism into the domain of legal classification. The article traces the genealogy of this legal practice and situates it within the broader European “legal turn” in the governance of memory. In doing so, it contributes to the scholarship on memory laws by identifying a distinct subtype of mnemonic governance: positive, declarative laws that do not prohibit or sanction representations of the past, but instead legally canonize distant historical figures as national heroes. This legislation gives rise to a legal mnemo-political regime in which commemoration is enacted through lawmaking and national heroes are produced by statute. These acts function primarily as symbolic declarations: they generate no juridical effects, serving instead as performative instruments of political competition. By engaging in an expanding struggle to canonize historical figures, parliamentary parties transform the legal recognition of heroism into a mechanism of symbolic legitimation, revealing the growing politicization of commemoration through legislative means.