Research

Multiple researchers of the Faculty of Law received funding by Studio Europa Maastricht. These fundings aim to support interdisciplinary, Europe-focused research and outreach initiatives

Henrique Marcos (Senior Lecturer in the Foundations of Law department) and Sarah Tas (Assistant Professor in the Public Law department) have received a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Hester van der Kaaij has been appointed as our new Vice Dean of Education. Van der Kaaij succeeds Sjoerd Claessens and will officially assume this role at the start of the new academic year.

Dr. Rohan Nanda and Dr. Henrique Marcos received a Comenius Teaching Fellows ho 2026 grant for their project ‘AI Due Diligence lab for the Blue Economy (BlueLab)’.

The current Dutch Compulsory Education Act ( leerplichtwet) allows for exceptions that raise questions in practice. Assistant Professor Marieke Hopman believes the legislation regarding the child's right to education conflicts with children's rights.

Human trafficking is too often studied only at its endpoint, namely at the peak of its most lucrative sexual exploitation, while its business model and damage to the rule of law go underexamined. A recent seemingly Tate-'influenced' Dutch criminal case shows why that needs to change.

Forced labour remains difficult to detect in garment supply chains, despite the increasing legal weight of companies’ responsibilities to do so. There is a need for novel ways of identifying risks of exploitation. Banks and their data could provide one such avenue.

Legal education can be enhanced by activating all senses. Object-based learning and problem-based learning proved to be instrumental in that path towards active transfer and creation of knowledge. The inclusion of relevant visuals in books of law can be likewise of help. Readers can benefit, for example, from the inclusion of portraits of legal actors, of images of seminal volumes, of sketches representing juridical acts, and of maps of specific locations. Legal literature–whenever possible–must outreach more to visual supports that enrich the contents and that enhance readability and academic dialogue.

Copyright lawsuits in the US brought by groups of writers, artists, and musicians against AI developers have mainly focused on the AI training stage rather than the output stage. One of the reasons for this focus is that claimants often struggle to demonstrate that AI outputs are copies of original works. Architecture is different: where general-purpose AI models like GhatGPT reproduce copyright-protected architectural designs, the similarity is remarkable and therefore it becomes easier to demonstrate copying. While we have not seen lawsuits from architects yet, they are likely to be unsuccessful nevertheless. Why?

Can we trust AI with our financial integrity? With financial crime, the stakes aren't just monetary—they involve the rule of law and the health of our democracy. But in the COMCRIM AI PhD project, we are facing a unique challenge: How do you train a machine to find a needle in a haystack when that 'needle' is constantly changing its position? Trying to answer this question, we provide an overview of how AI can support the detection of financial crimes that threaten the rule of law and democracy.