Latest blog articles

Legislative enactments and court decisions, together with social-historical events, provide the causal mechanisms that enable scholars to trace the evolution of ownership paradigms in different jurisdictions. In addition, shifts in ownership paradigms result from the circulation and flow of legal...

Flashy guys who work on the Zuidas, live in luxury penthouses and tear around in the latest Teslas and Jaguars – and all at the expense of ‘the ordinary man’ who they laughingly charge exorbitant hourly rates. This image of lawyers appears to be fairly persistent. But it has very little to do with...

The European Union (EU) faces challenges after the results of the United Kingdom (UK) European Union membership referendum that was held on June 23, 2016. Yet, Brexit is not the first challenge faced by the EU. Three points invite for reflection on Brexit and the future of the EU.

Fred Rodell, the once revered Yale Law School professor and the “bad boy of American legal academia” wrote that “[t]here are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content.” His harrowing words acutely capture my conflicting relationship with (legal)...

The increased flow of asylum applicants and migrants to the EU in recent years has not only put considerable pressure on the reception systems of Member States, but at the same time raises challenges regarding the integration of newcomers at the national and local level.

It took quite a while before the European countries realized and recognized that the influx from asylum-seekers via the Mediterranean Sea and Turkey into the European Union is not just a matter of controlling the outside borders of the Union, but also a humanitarian and human rights issue. Some...

I am sure you have heard that the Bulgarian government built a fence on the Bulgarian – Turkish border and that the ‘refugee crisis’ put the national asylum system to the test. What about the Bulgarian integration policies? Did you know that currently refugees in Bulgaria face ‘zero’ integration...

This year we have witnessed an extraordinary and tragic series of events. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have tried to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe. The UN estimates that over 2,500 people have lost their lives in the process. In the last few weeks, the focus has shifted to the EU’s...

Two prominent issues on the agenda of European equality lawyers have so far largely (although see recently CJ C-83/14 Nikolova) remained outside scrutiny of the Court of Justice of the European Union: discrimination on grounds of religion or belief and segregation of Roma. Recent developments may...

The 2015 Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX)   update highlights and confirms the shift towards a restrictive migration and integration policy in the Netherlands. Overall, the Netherlands dropped to the eleventh place in the MIPEX ranking, down from the fifth in 2010.