Prof. dr. Jan M. Smits (Professor of European Private Law)
Bouillonstraat 1-3
Room B 2.013
Maastricht
P.O. Box 616
NL-6200 MD Maastricht
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 (0)43 3883119/83020
Fax: +31 (0)43 3884907
E-mail: jan.smits@maastrichtuniversity.nl
List of publications: Metis
Personal homepage: www.jansmits.eu (with access to the full text of most publications)
Curriculum Vitae
Jan M. Smits (1967) is Professor of European Private Law at Maastricht University and academic director of the Maastricht European Private Law Institute (M-EPLI). He is also research professor of Comparative Legal Studies in the University of Helsinki. Jan Smits studied law at the universities of Leiden and Poitiers (1986-1991) and defended his PhD at the University of Leiden in 1995. He then taught at the universities of Stellenbosch and Tilburg before being appointed at Maastricht University, first (1996-1999) as an associate professor and then (1999) to the newly created Chair of European Private Law. Between 1999 and 2007, he led the research groups on Contract law and on Foundations of the Ius Commune Research School. He was chair of the Faculty of Law’s Science committee from 2000-2005 and vice-dean from 2005-2007. From 2008 to 2010, he was distinguished professor of European Private Law and Comparative Law at Tilburg University, a post he gave up in late 2010 to return to Maastricht and found the Maastricht European Private Law Institute.
Academic interests
Jan Smits publishes, teaches and supervises students in the fields of European private law, comparative law, legal theory and ‘law and…’ approaches. He has a special interest in questions of legal harmonisation (in particular in Europe and Asia), the foundations of (European) private law, mixed jurisdictions (including South Africa) and internationalisation of law generally. He is an outspoken proponent of an international approach towards law.
Visiting positions and other activities
Jan Smits held visiting positions at a number of foreign institutions, including the University of Stellenbosch, Tulane Law School, Leuven University, the University of Liège, Koc University, Louisiana State University and the Penn State Dickinson School of Law. In 2010-2011, he holds the UM-HiiL Chair on the Internationalisation of Law.
Jan Smits is a member of the editorial board of the Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law, the Journal of Civil Law Studies and the Electronic Journal of Comparative Law. He is chair of the board of the Ius Commune Europaeum book series and member of the editorial boards of (among others) Studies in the History of Private Law (Brill) and Studies in European Private Law (Europa Law Publishing). He is on the advisory boards of the SSRN European Private Law Journal, the Dutch Journal of Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory and the Belgian-Dutch Tijdschift voor Privaatrecht. Smits is also a honorary editor of the Chonnam National University Law Review (Korea) and of the Biblioteca Estudios de Derecho Civil (Peru).
Apart from his academic activities, Smits is a deputy judge in the Amsterdam Court of Appeal. He is also the Dutch correspondent at UNCITRAL for the Digest of Case Law on the United Nations Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CLOUT).
Smits ranks in the top 100 of the SSRN worldwide ranking of top law authors.
Elected memberships
Jan Smits is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He is also an elected member of the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law (IACCL) and the International Academy of Comparative Law (AIDC). He is a member of the Ius Commune Research School since its founding in 1996.
