Maastricht European Private Law Institute

The Law and Literature (L&L) movement gained momentum in Europe during the past decades, having had so far more exposure on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. L&L offers an open laboratory to create and test knowledge, and the teaching of law should benefit from the genius and creativity...

Social media influencers have become increasingly pervasive in the past years. Influencers (also often called content creators) are individuals with a large following on social media who create content which filters information, advertises products and services, offers advice, and promotes...

“What’s in a name?” – William Shakespeare’s famous question readily comes to one’s mind when analysing whether a national legal authority qualifies as a ‘court’ under the European Succession Regulation. In other words: what’s in a ‘court’? It is this very question that Member States are obliged to...

Last week, a court in The Hague acquitted a doctor accused of administering “unlawful euthanasia” to a severely demented patient back in 2016.

On the 10th of January 2019, AG-Szpunar concluded in Google v. CNIL that a removal request based on the Google Spain v. Costeja judgement should not have a worldwide effect. However, on the 4th of June, the same AG concluded that an EU national court can, in fact, order an internet service provider...

In the last few months all colleagues were able to participate in a poll to name our tutorial rooms. This leads to a choice doing justice to diversity in nationality, field, gender and type of name.

The development of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), nanotechnology and neonicotinoid insecticides presents opportunities for humans and the environment, but it can also carry risks to human, animal or plant health.

Teneinde gezamenlijke reflectie in gang te zetten, organiseren wij op 24 mei een congres waarbij onderzoekers uit alle geledingen van de rechtswetenschap met elkaar van gedachten kunnen wisselen.

Nowadays, large corporations are taking advantage of the rapid technological and scientific development in product manufacturing to increase their sales and profits.

Studying legal memes is not a usual and unfruitful endeavour but a method to understand the past, present, and future of principles and rules. It is an opportunity to include the mellifluous method of evolution in legal analysis.

Nowadays, the idea of granting robots legal personhood is considered as a serious political option: Saudi Arabia granted citizenship to the robot Sophia, certain national legislators are drafting legislation on legal personhood for robots and the European Parliament requested that the Commission...

Yesterday festive drinks were held at the occasion of opening the new Faculty Board Room and Alumni Wall. We also call upon everyone to help us name our tutorial rooms.

Last Friday the University celebrated its 43rd birthday. This was a wonderful and festive event for both the University and the Faculty. Four students received a prize for their thesis and Prof. Monica Claes presented Michael Ignatieff with a honorary doctorate.

On 16 December 2018, I had the pleasure of visiting the home town of my late Italian grandfather, a small hilltop community called Pollenza, in the lesser known region of Le Marche.

Over the years, I have heard various colleagues say they thought empirical legal research (ELR) has been on the rise. Some see this as a positive development, making law and legal research more evidence-based and diverse.

2018 is the first year in history when more than half of the world’s population is online . Since its dawn, the Internet has changed many aspects of daily life. The first wave...

Technological innovation and law have always made a good pair - as society evolves, so do (some of) our legal needs. Pockets of research expertise on law and technology have been around for decades, and so...

Dowsing is the ability to detect the source of things. Dowsing for a source of legal ideas must start at an early stage in academic life, when students write their first legal papers. This ability is mastered if students and tutors interact in the process of developing academic legal research...

The quest for perfection in LWOW allows you to learn fast, develop many skillsets, and give you a good introduction to the workplace of tomorrow. Technology is all around in LWOW, we might be young millennials drowned in it, but we still have a bit to learn. LWOW will teach you how to use...

Books remain important for legal scholars as a means to present their research. On 28 September a new Faculty book series was launched.

In 2018, academic storms start on Twitter. One of them has been the public concern surrounding the sponsors accepted by this year’s Amsterdam Privacy Conference . The Data Justice Lab at Cardiff University was hosting one of the...

Imagine you, a researcher, are given a bag of money, unlimited time and personnel. What research would you do? Gijs van Dijck, Professor of Private Law, would like to set up an experiment with the larger insurance companies in the Netherlands, focussing on the best way to deal with compensation.

While the internationalisation of higher education is under pressure in the Netherlands, legal education is an example of how a language policy can be successful: dependent on the aim and contents of the curriculum, lawyers can also be taught in other languages than their own.

When a marriage no longer works, you break up. Divorce proceedings are started and if all goes well, both partners can go on to live their own lives. At least, that is how it works with a civil marriage. What kind of problems do women encounter in a religious divorce?

Many things go well in Dutch legal academia. However, there is a need for legal academics to be more visible to the outside world. They should show why law must have a central place in the big research themes of today.

Now that the UK is ejecting itself from the confines of the EU what interest would they have to keep the principle of good faith within their legislations? And perhaps more interestingly, what incentive – if any – does the British politicians and negotiators have to negotiate their exit in a fair...

The right to access to justice is a fundamental driver to ensure the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Why? Because, by guaranteeing access to justice for all, we ensure democratic participation and mechanisms of accountability. Hence, policy makers should pay attention to...

Research education is one of Maastricht University’s CORE values: to take the university social responsibility seriously by linking the university to society, from the local to the global level, and to do so by creating open access knowledge which can further strengthen connections with society.

The University is dependent on innovation from the bottom-up. Recent examples of wonderful initiatives are the Rethinking Justice Hackathon and the Abraham de Pinto client counseling competition.

3-4 March 2018, Brightlands Smart Services Campus Making the world a better place is easier said than done. Ours is a shared world: citizens, businesses, states and institutions all face the same risks and challenges, and so there is a constant need for society to innovate - to find better ways of...

Every once in a while, I have the good fortune of reading a court case which is both fun and educational. The UK Supreme Court case Ivey (Appellant) v Genting Casinos (UK) Ltd t/a Crockfords (Respondent) is one such case, which tells an interesting story, while also explaining to the public the...

When a court invalidates an agreement because the rules of contract law were violated, then that agreement is deemed to have never existed. It was never valid and never will be valid. Aside from a few exceptions, everything that has already been performed under the agreement must be undone.

The biggest challenge of the 21 st century is undoubtedly the question of how to tackle the effects of a rising population, expanding industrialisation and growing environmental degradation. Apart from an ever complex world, there are externalities that are the result of the way humankind has been...

Many things happened at the Faculty in the past fortnight. Friday 26 January, we celebrated the 42 nd Dies Natalis of the UM. The one thing I always like about this celebration is that it is enormously varied compared to other universities’ anniversaries.

The aim of this conference is to bring together educators, researchers, professionals and students, to engage in a meaningful dialogue regarding the future of legal education, using ADR as a means to deliver significant skills to future graduates.

Should Uber be considered as a company that offers transportation services or rather as a digital platform that offers information society services, operating merely to match passengers with drivers?

The results of empirical research show that 82% of consumers read online reviews, not to mention companies, which rely on them to assess their own performance. The utility of the review depends on a number of factors, such as the perceived identity of a reviewer, and the language used.

In the past two years, I have worked on the legal consequences of the Volkswagen scandal. I have focused here and...

The recent case of the Volkswagen emissions scandal can be an example of how the law also upholds the interests of the environment towards companies. These are all examples of the law keeping companies in check, but in the past couple of years companies have taken it a step further.

While many decades ago, the field of law and technology was focused on the study of intellectual property, more recently, legal scholars have extended their interest in technology to other fields such as the regulation and governance of the Internet, privacy and cybersecurity, data collection,...

In recent years, an increasing number of customers and investors have filed claims against banks such as for mis-selling financial products or poor financial advice. Cees van Dam, Professor of European Tort Law at Maastricht University, reveals three general remarks on the bank’s duty of care: on...

If one formula one car hits another, and one of the parties is to blame, does that create liability to pay for the repairs of the other?

A 83-year-old man suffered severe brain damage due to a fall in a bank. The man was brought to a hospital where he died one week later. A medical report then showed that the lack of assistance did not (even partly) contribute to the man’s unfortunate death. Still, the refusal to help had certain...

One of the major achievements from European integration is the principle of mutual recognition. (Dutch only)

In July 1995, thousands of Muslim Bosniak men were deported from the enclave Srebrenica and subsequently killed by the Bosnian Serb army under the command of Ratko Mladić. The UN had declared Srebrenica a “safe area”, but the Dutchbat soldiers were not able to prevent the capturing and killing of...

At the hearing of the parliamentary interrogation commission, investigating tax evasion,Toine Manders claimed at June 16 th , that the government infringes people’s property rights by taxing. (Dutch only)

An employee seeks an apology from his employer for inadequately handling a complaint against him. A sexual abuse victim pursues an apology from the Catholic Church for the harm that was done by one of the priests. Can individuals claim an apology, and will a court order one?

In this blog I like to inform you about a visit to an interesting event on Law and Technology. The organiser has been striving to open the minds of law students from the University of Pavia and expose them to different views as to how technology can offer solutions for legal problems.

On 9 April 2011 a gunman killed 6 people in a shopping mall in the Dutch town of Alphen aan den Rijn. A group of victims now claims damages from the gunman’s parents, claiming that they should have prevented their son from this horrendous act. The claim will fail: on the facts of the case, there is...

How diverse is Dutch science? According to a majority in the Second Chamber, perhaps not quite diverse. Last week, the Chamber adopted a motion that calls upon the government to clarify whether Dutch university staff is made up too much homogeneous. ( Dutch only)

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.

Stichting ConsumentenClaim has announced to start legal proceedings against Dutch Railways on behalf of a passenger. The question that the court will essentially need to answer is whether...

Published on LBM . Here is a fun word that you may have come across recently: Kakistocracy. Based on the Greek word kakistos (...

Almost fifty percent of all marriages in the western world end in divorce. That is one of the most important reasons why relationship therapist Susan Pease Gadoua and reporter Vicki Larson, the authors of the recently published book...