Juan Branco

Juan Branco (born August 26, 1989) is a French-Spanish academic, activist and lawyer.
A former adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court and the French minister of foreign affairs, he is the current legal representative of Wikileaks and Julian Assange's defense team in France and has been one of the leaders of the struggle against the French copyright law HADOPI in 2009, along with La Quadrature du Net.
Academia and professional experience
Juan Branco is currently a Senior Research Fellow in international law at the Max Planck Society and has been a visiting researcher at the Yale Law School and a visiting faculty at Yale University. He holds a doctorate in Law from l'Ecole normale supérieure and was an editor for the Yale Journal of International Law.
In parallel to his academic career, Juan Branco has been part of the Wikileaks and Julian Assange defense team, under the direction of Baltasar Garzon, after having worked for the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court as a special assistant and liaison officer and served in the French minister of foreign affairs immediate office.
Works
His works belong to the critical theory school and have featured collaborations with Noam Chomsky, Julian Assange, Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Godard and Baltasar Garzon on issues regarding copyright law, mass violences, surveillance and individual freedoms in the digital age.
He has published on contemporary politics, political theory and international criminal law. Relying on a reinterpretation of the Hobbesian social contract theory, he authored a critical review of the first trial of the International Criminal Court to have reached a final conviction, Libération and Esprit have hosted his portrayals of contemporary political figures and movements like François Hollande, Podemos and Julian Assange.
He has also written extensively on the digital revolution and its effects on cultural industries, proposing a new financing model for the cinema industry based on a wide democratization of cultural access.
His main theoretical influences include Jean-Luc Godard, Georges Bataille, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Leonardo Sciascia and Serge Daney.
Activism
Juan Branco emerged as one of the figures of the French civil society's digital rights defense during the HADOPI law debates. In April 2009, he authored a letter signed by part of the French cinema intelligentsia advocating against HADOPI. The initiative, supported fifty personalities, including Catherine Deneuve, Chantal Ackerman or Christophe Honoré, was the first expression of defiance of the French cultural world against the proposed device and, in an unexpected outcome, triggered the repeal of the law in the French Parliament and the subsequent resignation of the Minister of culture and of the Minister in charge of the relations with the parliament.
Shortly after, Juan Branco co-founded with Jérémie Zimmermann and Philippe Aigrain, La Quadrature du Net, ISOC, SPEDIDAM and UFC Que Choisir, a citizen think tank that aimed to theorize alternative models of cultural financing and copyright systems. His book Réponses à Hadopi, proposing a new legal and financial system for the movie's industry, and Philippe Aigrain's Sharing, were written in the aftermath of this experience.
Chosen as an advisor to François Hollande during the 2012 French presidential campaign and as the chief of staff of the upcoming culture minister Aurélie Filippetti, he conceived and defended a radical reform of French exception culturelle based on the repeal of HADOPI law and the decriminalization of non-commercial Peer-to-peer cultural exchanges. Following an intense lobbying campaign by cultural industries representatives, his revocation was announced the day after the elections, triggering the abandonment of the reform plans and an important outcry from the civil society.
As part of the Indignados movement, he later on advised the Partido X on European policies during the 2014 European elections Campaign.
In May 2015, his critical narrative of the 2005 French riots trial was adapted to screen. The trial outcome triggered an important polemic and was perceived as the sign of the existence of a "judicial apartheid" in France.
As the lawyer of Julian Assange and Wikileaks in France during the 2015 NSA Espionnage revelations, he publicly represented the organization and interfaced with French authorities in Assange's tentative to obtain asylum in France.
Journalism
As a journalist, Juan Branco covered the Kivu conflict and the for Le Monde diplomatique and Les Inrockuptibles.
Distinctions
2015 Fondation Varenne Award, given with the support of the International Criminal Court and the Presidency of the French Constitutional Council.
Other
According to David Cronenberg, Juan Branco and his father influenced him to adapt the novel Cosmopolis to film.
Close to Sciences Po's director Richard Descoings, he represented Sciences Po's student community at his burial.
Alumnus of the Ecole normale supérieure, he received the first Ph.D. in law in the history of the grande école.
Bibliography
*L'ordre et le monde (Paris, Fayard, 2016, ISBN 978-2213680880), edited by Alain Badiou and Barbara Cassin
*De l'affaire Katanga au contrat social global: Un regard sur la Cour pénale internationale (Paris, LGDJ-IUV, 2015, ISBN 978-2370320582)
*Réponses à Hadopi (Paris, Capricci, 2011, ISBN 978-2918040255)

Main Menu

See Also

Main Menu