Latest blog articles

In this piece, I will use two memes to begin to unpack what I think is the common denominator of contemporary populist rhetoric. I will explain that the real substance of this rhetoric is the creation of a false moral equivalence, revealing a nihilism. Finally, I will suggest how this false moral...

Fairy tales, when understood as manuals of behaviour that are shared within the household, can serve as a means to study and understand the law at a specific time and space. This claim is not new. The Grimm Brothers, the renowned scholars Friedrich C. von Savigny (1779-1861) and John H. Wigmore...

In the ITEM Cross-Border Impact Assessment 2021, the "Impact analysis into the future of working from home for cross-border workers post-COVID-19" investigated the consequences for taxation and social security of working from home by cross-border workers. Hybrid work is the future, also for the...

Armed conflicts are not something new, sadly. They emerge in different parts of the globe, at different times, and due to different reasons. Three reflections follow on the role of legal education in the context of armed conflicts, inviting for paths for instructors and students to pursue peace...

Not out of possibility, but out of necessity

The last couple of weeks of 2021 were dominated by the cross-border nature of the COVID-19 crisis, and the fight against it. While the Netherlands went into the holiday season under a lockdown, complete closures were largely absent in Germany and...

Language plays a fundamental role as a channel for law. It can enable members of society to access justice. Conversely, an inadequate use of language may result in a dissociation of law from a specific society. Language is a fundamental means to convey messages, to know the law, and to shape the law...

Law is a social science that is subject to mutation. Scholars devote efforts to reconstruct the events and the activities of actors behind those changes. These efforts are many times materialized in comparative legal historical studies that trigger new trends and lines of research. These efforts...

Monographs and law review articles are legal sources that can be better studied and understood by dissecting (Lat. dissecare) or “cutting” them into seven pieces. Looking carefully at those pieces–as when dissecting organisms in biological sciences–can help researchers to work with sources...

Historical novels offer a place to outreach for other legal systems, providing laboratories to study and understand law and society. There is especial value in revisiting historical novels that depict law and society, especially in these days of Covid-19. Such is the case of the novel by Daniel...

After 493 days of intensive negotiations, Belgium has a new federal government¹  The largest amount released for the new policy is invested in social policy, i.e. 2.3 billion euros out of a total of 3.2 billion euros. The federal government's objective is to protect social security and secure long...