Latest blog articles

While the story of the company is a little history of European integration in itself, it was the decision of the European Court of Justice in the case Van Gend & Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen (1963) that gave Van Gend & Loos a place in European Union law. The case itself was...

The corona virus is causing education to move from offline to online. In the Netherlands, the government and higher education institutions announced last Thursday (12 March 2020) that all in-person education has to be replaced by online education. Online means more reliance on technology. So here...

Asylum-seekers at the Greek island of Lesbos are in a vulnerable position. They claim basic human rights and hold the Europeans accountable. What can a human rights scholar do? His role is limited. When there is no political will, compassion and solidarity are gone.

The 70^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 25^th anniversary of the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights are a landmark in the development of human rights and a source of inspiration for academic research on new global human rights issues.

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.

The US government is breaching its obligation to promote universal respect for human rights by cutting back on its contribution to UNRWA for aid to Palestinian refugees. Other states have extraterritorial human rights obligations to compensate for this reduction.

In the past two years, I have worked on the legal consequences of the Volkswagen scandal. I have focused here and here primarily on whether the corporate social responsibility policy of Volkswagen, in which the company has outlined its commitment to environmental protection, can have legal...

In July 1995, thousands of Muslim Bosniak men were deported from the enclave Srebrenica and subsequently killed by the Bosnian Serb army under the command of Ratko Mladić. The UN had declared Srebrenica a “safe area”, but the Dutchbat soldiers were not able to prevent the capturing and killing of...

Case law analysis has the potential to disrupt the way legal scholars, practitioners and students search case law. But rest assured: the technology will not replace humans.

An employee seeks an apology from his employer for inadequately handling a complaint against him. A sexual abuse victim pursues an apology from the Catholic Church for the harm that was done by one of the priests. Can individuals claim an apology, and will a court order one?