Latest blog articles

Why it is so challenging for Dutch authorities to effectively implement the government policy against serious drug related organized crime? Recently, my colleagues and I from Maastricht University and Erasmus University Rotterdam published an article in the Dutch Tijdschrift over Cultuur en...

On 14 and 15 November 2022, UM’s Faculty of Law held the “Logic of International Law Conference.” Henrique Marcos (UM & São Paulo Univ.) and Antonia Waltermann (UM) organised the conference under the auspices of the Globalization and Law Network (GLaw-Net) and the International Law Discussion Group...

The debate on the implications of Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia recently intensified after a report concluded that the Dutch forces had used extreme violence. Reactions to the report reveal that the issue remains controversial and challenging to discuss. The findings in the report do however...

What does the term ‘MOCCA’ evoke in your mind, a kind of coffee or a specific brand? This Kat randomly asked this question to her friends currently at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition Munich. Most of them regarded ‘MOCCA’ as a kind of coffee instead of a specific brand except...

Nobuki Yamamoto, a Japanese contemporary artist, made an eye-catching work of ‘goldfish swimming in a phone booth’ (‘Work 1’) by December 2000 at the latest. In October 2011, a student organisation called ‘Goldfish Club’ at Kyoto University of Art and Design produced Work 2 and exhibited it for a...

Sovereignty is invoked in many discussions today, from Brexit to Catalan independence, but it is rarely clear what, exactly, those who invoke sovereignty mean by it. For the purposes of understanding, analyzing, and understanding legal phenomena, however, a more precise understanding is necessary.

Recently, Chanel Co., Ltd. lost a trade mark infringement case regarding its ‘Double C’ logo in China. The full text of the decision can be visited via here (Google translatable). The case has drawn wide attention and, mostly, negative comments. Does this seemingly-counterintuitive loss indeed, well...

25 years after the Genocide Against the Tutsi, the denial of this genocide still poses a serious challenge to prevention and reconciliation. How to address this problem was one of the central questions discussed during a recent commemorative conference in the Peace Palace.

What does sovereignty mean in today’s world, given trends of globalisation, Europeanisation and also polarisation?

Instead of protecting the victims of Burundi, the current government shields those who are responsible. The problem with such impunity is that it de facto “legalizes” violence as no accountability is created.