Latest blog articles

  • Pursuing a global context for ownership paradigms

    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...

  • Myth: All lawyers are just profiteers

    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...

    onderbetaling sociale advocaten
  • Contextualizing Brexit

    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.

    Europa toekomst_MLR
  • A thank you letter (or hate mail) for Fred Rodell

    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)...

    Lions mouth
  • Integration of refugees: towards a more coordinated approach

    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.

    refugees
  • What is Private Law for?

    Albert Camus famously wrote that ‘life is the sum of all your choices.’ Private lawyers could not agree more. At the core of private law lies the idea that individuals are allowed to know better than the State.

    Pieter Bruegel_the_elder-_the_corn_harvest_august
  • How I stopped worrying about asylum seekers

    In a short memo, published on 22 March, the Dutch Liberal Party (VVD) expressed its view on how to handle the increasing number of asylum claims in the Netherlands, and more broadly in the EU, as well as the continuously tragic events concerning refugees that occur at the external borders of the EU...

    Trapped in despair: ‘The Great Escape’ in the Mediterranean