Latest blog articles

  • The 1st of April 2024 marks the day when Germany adopted the most progressive legal approach to cannabis in Europe. While for the Dutch, this may sound like an April’s fool prank, it is far from it: The new German CanG (Cannabis Law) regulates the consumption, possession, and supply of the soft drug...

  • international law

    Genocide in Gaza?

    A brief explainer about the ICJ case brought by South Africa against Israel

    On 29 December, almost three months after the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing Israeli military strikes on the Gaza Strip, which had by then resulted in the deaths of more than 21,000 people and more than...

  • Germany has elected a new government. One of the legal reforms coalition of Social democrats, the Green party and the free liberals want to put on the tracks is the legalization of cannabis. From a criminological point of view, this is the right decision.

  • Hugo Grotius

    To any international lawyer, Hugo de Groot (10 April 1583 – 28 August 1645), usually referred to by his Latin name as Hugo Grotius, does not need any introduction. He is generally seen as the “father of public international law”, often together with Francisco De Vitoria (1483-1546) and Alberico...

  • The very recent ruling of the CJEU in DK (C-653/19 PPU, 28 November 2019) came to verify two quite depressing suspicions about the current status of European criminal law. First, Directive 2016/343 on the presumption of innocence remains an instrument with staggeringly limited applicability...

  • Today, on Human Rights Day, the Peace Palace in The Hague will be the venue of the somewhat ironic spectacle of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and global icon of human rights leading her country’s defence against allegations of genocide, the most serious violation of human rights possible.

  • It would have been rather uncomfortable for the Court to rule that the Italian limitation periods for serious VAT-fraud cases should be set aside, wouldn't it? Can Taricco II be, after all, just a temporary (and unstable!) bridge over the troubled waters of the EU’s financial interests, soon to be...