Norwegian version of this page

Mala Loth

Postdoctoral Fellow - ARENA Centre for European Studies

Email mala.loth@arena.uio.no

Username

Visiting address Gaustadalléen 30A 2. etasje 0373 Oslo

Postal address Postboks 1143 Blindern 0318 Oslo

Download business card

Academic interests

Mala's academic interests are on lawyers and other societal actors and their role in the history of European social integration as well as the history of knowledge and the history of ignorance of European law.

Background

Mala has a PhD in History from the University of Oslo (2021), a MA in History from Humboldt-University, Berlin, and a BA in History and Law from the University of Göttingen.

Prior to her position at ARENA, she was guest researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Frankfurt, and senior researcher in the ERC-project "CREATIVE IPR" at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo.

Projects

At ARENA, Mala works on The European dimension on Norwegian Law (EurNor) project. Her project focuses on the historical production, discussion, and diffusion of Community law related knowledge as well as its ignorance in Norway since the 1980s.

Publications

Véronique Pouillard, Marius Buning and Mala Loth (eds.), Musicians and Copyright. A History of Collective Rights Management in the Music Industry (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2026).

Competing Futures: GEMA, the European Commission and Copyright Law, 1962–72, in Véronique Pouillard, Marius Buning, and Mala Loth (eds.), Musicians and Copyright. A History of Collective Rights Management in the Music Industry (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2026), 206–240.

Symposium with Brigitte Leucht, Magnus Esmark and Mala Loth, ʽRethinking European Legal Integration: Legal text from a bottom-up perspective and the functioning of European law, 1957–2000ʼ, European Law Open 4, no. 3 (2025): 505–517.

Rethinking the Marshall-Case ‘from below’: Helen Marshall as a legal entrepreneur between Southern England and Luxembourg, 1978–1993, European Law Open 4, no. 3 (2025): 553–573.

Working on Principles: Changing Concepts of ‘Labour’ before the European Court of Justice, 1972–1988, Contemporary European History 34, no. 3 (2025): 630–650.

Zur falschen Zeit am falschen Ort: Die Verhandlung des Rechts auf gleiche Bezahlung vor dem Europäischen Gerichtshof (1971–1984), L'Homme. European Journal for Feminist History 35, no. 2 (2024): 17–33.

Review: Georg Fischer, Stephan Klingner, Malte Zill (eds.): Monopole im medienindustriellen Komplex? Verwertungsgesellschaften gestern, heute, morgen (Büchner Verlag, 2023), H-Soz-Kult, 18 July 2023.

(with Kim Priemel) Et sterkere EU er mulig, Morgenbladet (28 April 2020).

Liebling der Anwälte. Manfred Krug und die Menschlichkeit des Rechts, Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 16 (2019): 400–409.

Helt europeisk, Morgenbladet (8 November 2019).

It could have been worse. A Historian’s Impression on the Conference “Contingency in International Law: How International law could have been’”, Völkerrechtsblog (17 July 2018).

Pouillard, Véronique; Buning, Marius & Loth, Mala (2026). Introduction in: Musicians and Copyright. In Pouillard, Véronique; Buning, Marius & Loth, Mala (Ed.), Musicians and copyright A history of collective rights management in the music industry. Manchester University Press. ISSN 9781526180148. p. 1–28. doi: 10.7765/9781526180162.00007. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
The management and redistribution of royalties, particularly through copyright, have been the subject of ongoing debates since the establishment of modern intellectual property in the 18th century. The Berne Convention of 1886 focused on copyright, allowing for the global coordination of intellectual property laws. This evolution of copyright law coincided with the advent of new recording technologies that transformed the music industry, creating new commercial and legal dynamics. At the national level, collective management societies (CMOs) are organizational forms that have profoundly shaped the music industry since the 19th century, among which the French Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique (SACEM), founded in 1851, is the oldest one. In Europe, the CMOs organized the collection of dues nationally and redistributed those dues to the foreign societies according to where artists were enrolled. The CMOs activity reached further, with some of them branching out to European colonies. From the interwar period, the foundation of the international umbrella society International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) acted as a unifying element between the various CMOs, in Europe and then globally. This introductory chapter examines the emergence of the CMOs; their relation to the internationalization of copyright laws and regulations; the interrelations between technological change and the CMOs activity; and the relevance of historical methods to study the CMOs.
Loth, Mala (2025). Rethinking the Marshall-Cases ‘from below’: Helen Marshall as a legal entrepreneur in Southern England and Luxembourg, 1978–1993. European Law Open. 4(3), p. 553–573. doi: 10.1017/elo.2025.10038. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
In legal discourse, the Marshall cases (C-152/84 and C-271/91) have become known as landmark judgements for gender equality. Yet for historians, Helen Marshall’s legal journey is an invitation to make a broader claim of how to approach a landmark case in the history of European law ‘from below’, moving away from a binary analysis of European institutions on the one hand and national structures on the other. Based on original research using a wide range of newspaper articles, published documents from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and archival documents, this article follows Helen Marshall’s legal journey from 1978 to 1993. Using Marshall’s individual role as a ‘heuristic tool’, the article argues that Marshall was a ‘legal entrepreneur’ of her own cause with her actions reflecting the British zeitgeist through the medium of European law. It demonstrates that the legal construction of the Community was by no means a project driven solely by elites. The article further nuances the notion of Britain, as a nation, as an ‘awkward partner’ by highlighting that Marshall, a British citizen, actively contributed to European integration within a complex of other actors.
Loth, Mala (2025). Working on Principles: Changing Concepts of 'Labour' before the European Court of Justice, 1972-1988. Contemporary European History. ISSN 0960-7773. 34(3), p. 630–650. doi: 10.1017/S0960777325000141. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Free movement of labour was established as a so-called principle, that is, one of the four fundamental norms governing all community policy, in the Treaties of Rome in 1957. Yet already from this beginning, what was to be understood as labour, and what was not, was up for debate. In due course, judicial disputes would arrive at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, most of them related to migration. While claims to social security benefits by Italian miners played the most important part in the first couple of years following the Treaties of Rome, over the course of the decades a vast variety of welfare and social policy issues came to be associated with free movement of labour. As time went on, the trajectory pointed to a broader, both more complex and more flexible understanding of what constituted labour as the number of cases brought to Luxemburg increased that dealt with activities previously not regarded as work. Students and sex workers, unemployed and sick persons were demanding national benefits through European channels, transcending the boundaries of national welfare state systems and helping re-define labour and work in the process. This article will chart this development by studying a sample of cases that arose in Belgium from 1972 to 1988, tracing the social transformations that gave rise to the legal claims and analysing how these were translated into the language of Community law and endorsed or rejected by the Court.
Leucht, Brigitte; Schrøder, Magnus Hannibal Esmark & Loth, Mala (2025). Rethinking European Legal Integration: Legal text from a bottom-up perspective and the functioning of European law, 1957–2000. European Law Open. 4(3), p. 505–517. doi: 10.1017/elo.2025.10031. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
The article promotes a new methodological approach to examining the development of European law that significantly advances our understanding of European legal integration. Building on interdisciplinary debates on European law between historians, lawyers, and political and social scientists, the article argues for analysing European law by approaching a legal text from a bottom-up perspective. Our understanding of legal text includes all texts that jurists consider as legal and use in judicialised conflicts. Examining how a range of actors have used legal text to shape conflicts instead of taking ‘integration’ (or lack thereof) as the ontological lens yields important new insights into the functioning of European law over time. The case studies in this special issue trialling our methodological approach show that, first, certain areas of European law come into view including non-discrimination, the environment, and human rights. Second, social actors in the Member States and beyond were from the beginning involved in co-creating these areas of law, which indicates that European legal integration has always been more than an elite-driven project. Third, actors have mobilised European law for various reasons, often not tied to ‘Europe’. They have used European law to translate a range of political issues into legal questions. Finally, legal knowledge and expertise – and lawyers – have been central to European integration even if this is not reduced to an understanding of the binary relationship between European institutions and the Member States.
Loth, Mala (2024). Zur falschen Zeit am falschen Ort. Die Verhandlung des Rechts auf Gleichbehandlung von Männern vor dem Europäischen Gerichtshof (1971–1984). L'Homme. European Journal of Feminist History. ISSN 1016-362X. Full text in Research Archive
Loth, Mala Katharina (2019). LIEBLING DER ANWÄLTE: Manfred Krug und die Menschlichkeit des Rechts. Zeithistorische Forschungen. ISSN 1612-6033. p. 400–409. doi: 10.14765/zzf.dok-1512. Full text in Research Archive

View all works in NVA

Pouillard, Véronique; Buning, Marius & Loth, Mala (2026). Musicians and copyright A history of collective rights management in the music industry. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9781526180148. 292 p. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
Musicians and Copyright explores the role of Collective Management Organizations (CMOs) in shaping the music industry from the mid-nineteenth century to today. Edited by VéroniquePouillard, Marius Buning, and Mala Loth, the book traces the development of CMOs and their impact on copyright and cultural production. Through historical analysis, it examines the challenges CMOs have faced, from colonial contexts to European integration and the digital age, and shows how CMOs have navigated regulatory changes, technological shifts, and internal politics. Offering a detailed history of these important institutions, Musicians and Copyright is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the intersection of music, law, and the cultural industries.

View all works in NVA

Loth, Mala (2023). G. Fischer u.a. (Hrsg.): Monopole im medienindustriellen Komplex? H-Soz-Kult. Kommunikation und Fachinformation für die Geschichtswissenschaften. Full text in Research Archive
Loth, Mala (2018). It could have been worse A historian’s impression of the conference “Contingency in International Law: How International law could have been”. völkerrechtsblog. ISSN 2510-2567. Full text in Research Archive

View all works in NVA

Published Aug. 6, 2024 12:50 PM - Last modified Apr. 23, 2026 9:52 AM