Law stories, blogs and videos

Professor Bruno de Witte is saying goodbye to Maastricht University, but not to European Law. He will continue to deliver his razor-sharp legal analyses at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence.

After years of meaningful work at our university, Prof. Fons Coomans gave his farewell address to the Faculty of Law on 2 September, where he examined important human rights questions. How do they impact our daily lives? And how do they affect people on a personal level? Will future generations still...

Both work on their projects at Maastricht University’s Faculty of Law on a Hestia Grant. With that, their paths towards settling in Dutch academia and enriching the knowledge and skills in their home countries might look parallel moving towards the future. But Nasrat Sayed’s and Arif Aksu’s respective...

The European rule of law is under siege in Poland. On October 7 th, 2021, the Polish Constitutional Tribunal declared that the Polish Constitution is more important than any EU treaty. The rest of Europe is keeping a close eye on the situation; how is it going to develop? Is there any chance that the...

She was a criminal lawyer for many years and a member of the Dutch Senate for the GroenLinks (green left) party. Since 2019, she has been professor of Legal Professions & Ethics at Maastricht University. And in her latest novel, De Juiste Houding [The Right Attitude], her fascination with the grey area...

The Facebook Papers, a series of documents leaked by whistleblower Frances Haugen, brim with revelations. The company appears to have been fully aware of its role in the dissemination of false information and anger-inducing content. Moral philosopher Katleen Gabriels and data protection lawyer Paolo...

After 35 years at Maastricht University, Constitutional Law Professor Aalt-Willem Heringa will hold his farewell lecture on 25 March. Here he looks back on a successful career and ahead at the role of courts in the Netherlands and Europe.

Hildegard Schneider is set to say goodbye. As professor of European Migration Law and former dean of the Faculty of Law, her career coincided with the foundation and pioneering years of the law faculty. She herself made an important contribution to the profiling of Maastricht University as a ‘European’...

Sexual harassment in public is becoming a punishable offence. It’s a good idea, says Suzan van der Aa, professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure, but one that doesn’t go far enough. “Sexual harassment in the workplace is common too, and usually has a greater impact on the victims.”

The pandemic has called into question the idea of a Europe without frontiers. Sarah Schoenmaekers and Martin Unfried—specialists in EU law and Euregional cooperation, respectively—search for answers.

This month marks the 30^th anniversary of Pokémon. A highly popular Japanese franchise consisting of animated series and films, computer games, and trading card games. Many people are fascinated by Pokémon and over the years, Pokémon also caught my attention. Not because I am a fan of the series or because I collect the cards, but because Pokémon have interesting connections to criminal behaviour. Below I share some fascinating criminological insights and address the question whether Pokémon might be criminogenic.

Human trafficking is too often studied only at its endpoint, namely at the peak of its most lucrative sexual exploitation, while its business model and damage to the rule of law go underexamined. A recent seemingly Tate-'influenced' Dutch criminal case shows why that needs to change.

Forced labour remains difficult to detect in garment supply chains, despite the increasing legal weight of companies’ responsibilities to do so. There is a need for novel ways of identifying risks of exploitation. Banks and their data could provide one such avenue.

Legal education can be enhanced by activating all senses. Object-based learning and problem-based learning proved to be instrumental in that path towards active transfer and creation of knowledge. The inclusion of relevant visuals in books of law can be likewise of help. Readers can benefit, for example, from the inclusion of portraits of legal actors, of images of seminal volumes, of sketches representing juridical acts, and of maps of specific locations. Legal literature–whenever possible–must outreach more to visual supports that enrich the contents and that enhance readability and academic dialogue.

Copyright lawsuits in the US brought by groups of writers, artists, and musicians against AI developers have mainly focused on the AI training stage rather than the output stage. One of the reasons for this focus is that claimants often struggle to demonstrate that AI outputs are copies of original works. Architecture is different: where general-purpose AI models like GhatGPT reproduce copyright-protected architectural designs, the similarity is remarkable and therefore it becomes easier to demonstrate copying. While we have not seen lawsuits from architects yet, they are likely to be unsuccessful nevertheless. Why?