Maastricht European Private Law Institute

Last week, a court in The Hague acquitted a doctor accused of administering “unlawful euthanasia” to a severely demented patient back in 2016.

On the 10th of January 2019, AG-Szpunar concluded in Google v. CNIL that a removal request based on the Google Spain v. Costeja judgement should not have a worldwide effect. However, on the 4th of June, the same AG concluded that an EU national court can, in fact, order an internet service provider...

In the last few months all colleagues were able to participate in a poll to name our tutorial rooms. This leads to a choice doing justice to diversity in nationality, field, gender and type of name.

The development of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), nanotechnology and neonicotinoid insecticides presents opportunities for humans and the environment, but it can also carry risks to human, animal or plant health.

Teneinde gezamenlijke reflectie in gang te zetten, organiseren wij op 24 mei een congres waarbij onderzoekers uit alle geledingen van de rechtswetenschap met elkaar van gedachten kunnen wisselen.

Nowadays, large corporations are taking advantage of the rapid technological and scientific development in product manufacturing to increase their sales and profits.

Studying legal memes is not a usual and unfruitful endeavour but a method to understand the past, present, and future of principles and rules. It is an opportunity to include the mellifluous method of evolution in legal analysis.

Nowadays, the idea of granting robots legal personhood is considered as a serious political option: Saudi Arabia granted citizenship to the robot Sophia, certain national legislators are drafting legislation on legal personhood for robots and the European Parliament requested that the Commission...

Yesterday festive drinks were held at the occasion of opening the new Faculty Board Room and Alumni Wall. We also call upon everyone to help us name our tutorial rooms.

Last Friday the University celebrated its 43rd birthday. This was a wonderful and festive event for both the University and the Faculty. Four students received a prize for their thesis and Prof. Monica Claes presented Michael Ignatieff with a honorary doctorate.

On 16 December 2018, I had the pleasure of visiting the home town of my late Italian grandfather, a small hilltop community called Pollenza, in the lesser known region of Le Marche.

Over the years, I have heard various colleagues say they thought empirical legal research (ELR) has been on the rise. Some see this as a positive development, making law and legal research more evidence-based and diverse.

2018 is the first year in history when more than half of the world’s population is online . Since its dawn, the Internet has changed many aspects of daily life. The first wave...

Technological innovation and law have always made a good pair - as society evolves, so do (some of) our legal needs. Pockets of research expertise on law and technology have been around for decades, and so...

Dowsing is the ability to detect the source of things. Dowsing for a source of legal ideas must start at an early stage in academic life, when students write their first legal papers. This ability is mastered if students and tutors interact in the process of developing academic legal research...

The quest for perfection in LWOW allows you to learn fast, develop many skillsets, and give you a good introduction to the workplace of tomorrow. Technology is all around in LWOW, we might be young millennials drowned in it, but we still have a bit to learn. LWOW will teach you how to use...

Books remain important for legal scholars as a means to present their research. On 28 September a new Faculty book series was launched.

In 2018, academic storms start on Twitter. One of them has been the public concern surrounding the sponsors accepted by this year’s Amsterdam Privacy Conference . The Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University was hosting one of the...

Imagine you, a researcher, are given a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Gijs van Dijck, Professor of Private Law, would like to set up an experiment with the larger insurance companies in the Netherlands, focussing on the best way to deal with compensation.

While the internationalisation of higher education is under pressure in the Netherlands, legal education is an example of how a language policy can be successful: dependent on the aim and contents of the curriculum, lawyers can also be taught in other languages than their own.

When a marriage no longer works, you break up. Divorce proceedings are started and if all goes well, both partners can go on to live their own lives. At least, that is how it works with a civil marriage. What kind of problems do women encounter in a religious divorce?

Many things go well in Dutch legal academia. However, there is a need for legal academics to be more visible to the outside world. They should show why law must have a central place in the big research themes of today.

Now that the UK is ejecting itself from the confines of the EU what interest would they have to keep the principle of good faith within their legislations? And perhaps more interestingly, what incentive – if any – does the British politicians and negotiators have to negotiate their exit in a fair...

The right to access to justice is a fundamental driver to ensure the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Why? Because, by guaranteeing access to justice for all, we ensure democratic participation and mechanisms of accountability. Hence, policy makers should pay attention to...

Research education is one of Maastricht University’s CORE values: to take the university social responsibility seriously by linking the university to society, from the local to the global level, and to do so by creating open access knowledge which can further strengthen connections with society.

The University is dependent on innovation from the bottom-up. Recent examples of wonderful initiatives are the Rethinking Justice Hackathon and the Abraham de Pinto client counseling competition.

3-4 March 2018, Brightlands Smart Services Campus Making the world a better place is easier said than done. Ours is a shared world: citizens, businesses, states and institutions all face the same risks and challenges, and so there is a constant need for society to innovate - to find better ways of...