After the United Kingdom had voted to leave the European Union in the national referendum on 23 June 2016, the swift ascent of May to the leadership of a deeply divided nation was not marked by decisive and resolute action, but a sense of uncertainty and strategic obfuscation.

How the Supreme Court restored Parliament to its rightful place. That’s precisely what happened on Tuesday: The Supreme Court decided, by a 8-3 majority, to mandate that the triggering of Article 50 TEU can only take place after prior approval from both houses of Parliament.

The UK Supreme Court has ruled: no Brexit without prior involvement of Parliament! It is often said that courts may enter the political domain as the representative of the people and the body to which governments should be accountable.

May the US President appoint his son in law as advisor to the White House? For quite a lot formal appointments the President needs the advice and consent (permission) from the senate, but not here. Is it permissible? 

Recently it was brought in the news that families of Americans killed by ISIS in Belgium and France sued twitter for allegedly failing to keep members of the terrorist organisation of its platform. Lawsuits concerning American victims who were killed in Europe raise a number of interesting and legal questions.

The European Union and its member states have failed to comply with their extraterritorial human rights obligations to provide humanitarian aid and fulfil the subsistence rights of asylum-seekers.

Edwin Kruisbergen obtained his doctorate on monday 9-01-17 at the VU, with a thesis entitled Combating Organised Crime; a study on undercover policing and the follow-the-money strategy. According to confiscation of illegally obtained assets Kruisbergen concluded that not even a 5^th part of the total amount that the Public Prosecution Service (OM) tries to claim from convicted persons, finally ends up in the Treasury. ^{(Dutch only)}

Published on MLR blogs. What do documents about negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), oversight of the EU’s Food Safety Authority or Tax-Justice have in common? In order to access these documents, (selected) Members of the European Parliament are requested to attend closed reading rooms. This blog post discusses how an exception to open parliamentary oversight is increasingly becoming a regular institutional practice and questions its spillover effect on requests for public access to documents.

German Commissioner Guenther Oettinger is facing hearings in the European Parliament this week regarding his promotion to the budget and human resources portfolio.

Recently one of my foreign network partners (from France) requested me to assist him in advising and assisting one of his clients in a take over of a Dutch company. He was asked to provide expertise and guidance in the areas of employment law and employee benefits taxation (wage withholding taxes, social security, etc.). In fact he needed to perform a due diligence of the Dutch company in those areas. The due diligence had a special focus on the cross border activities of the Dutch company. Because the Dutch company had a significant number of employees working cross border and/or being assigned to a foreign country.