Maastricht European Private Law Institute

The Ius Commune Workshop on Contract Law took place on 25 November with its main theme being Empirical Research in Contract Law. During the workshop, five presenters reported on either their fully-fledged projects or shared ideas on early-stage studies.

Observing the long-awaited Proposal for a Directive on improving labour conditions of people working through digital labour platforms.

What can we learn from the ‘Great Debates’ in legal history? Or more specific, what could the participants of the Workshop Ius Commune in the Making: Great Debates in the History of Law...

What is the perspective of several countries on punitive damages in and outside of Europe? What issues arise from the recognition and enforcement of foreign (mostly US) punitive damages judgments? How do different countries view the public policy exception? These questions and more were among the...

Some of the favourite expressions of online platform providers around the world are that they ‘only offer a platform’ and are ‘in no way responsible for statements made or goods offered by third parties on their platform’. However, recent US case law held Amazon liable for physical harm caused by...

Achieving a sustainable way of life requires massive societal changes and (private international) law should enable, rather than hamper, the realization of such essential goals.

The DSA reflects the issue of advertising in its draft Art. 24, mandating transparency in advertising displayed by platforms – the traditional ad archives, discussed above. However, the proposal makes no acknowledgement whatsoever of new advertising business models emerging from content...

Over the last years, the business of influencer marketing has practically exploded. Companies have begun to realise the multiplying factor of having influencers promote their brand through original and entertaining content. However, in combination with this marketing trend, several legal issues...

Does a little piece of feudalism in property law contribute to sustainability? The addressed topic was delivered by distinguished scholar Prof. dr. Vincent Sagaert and related to the general principles of property law reform, with the topic of the lecture being: " The Codification of Property Law:...

Recent days have seen the meteoric rise and fall of the European Super League (ESL). This new league would have consisted of 15 founding clubs and 5 other clubs; the former consisting of ‘big clubs’ which could not be relegated and the latter in clubs who performed well over the past years on a...

The Nutri-Score has been officially endorsed in France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Spain and in other European countries they have been voluntarily used by large, private retail corporate groups. Given its underlying aim of helping curbing obesity and nutritious calory...

M-EPLI, along with the Maastricht Law & Tech Lab and the Institute of Data Science, hosted the online webinar ‘Researching Discrimination in E-Commerce and Online Advertising’ on the 4th and 5th of March 2021. Throughout the two-day event, speakers from different countries, institutes and...

The UK Competition and Market’s Authority recently published a report on the consequences of the online platforms’ use of algorithms (‘sequences of instructions to perform a computation or solve a problem’) for consumer protection and for competition.

Written by Yu Yan & Michael Faure. The Chinese word “economy” is originated from a famous idiom called “经世济民” (jing shi ji min), which suggests that a prosperous society is not only about economic success but also about the financial well-being of the general population. Microinsurance (the...

Influencer marketing and mental health. The global spend on Influencer marketing is expected to reach $15 Billions by 2022, and naturally, brands have grasped how influential social media could be in their marketing campaign. Influencer marketing has grown exponentially, leaving more traditional...

In agony, many US citizens were awaiting the night of November 3 rd when the first voting results for the US presidential election were expected to trickle in. Having regard to what happened since May and what was bound to happen in the weeks following the election, Twitter, presumably, was...

Nowadays, the prominent role social media has in our society cannot be denied, plenty of people define themselves through their presence online.

The disturbances social media has been causing to its users’ mental health cannot be ignored. It is of extreme importance that the private and public spheres work together to protect consumers from the unfeasible search for perfection.

The yearly Ius Commune conference, this year held online on 26 November 2020, traditionally includes a contract law workshop. This year the theme of the workshop was “Contract law in times of corona and other sanitary crises”. Five researchers presented recent work dealing with subthemes.

Every year in November, one of the Faculties that forms part of the Ius Commune Research School organises the annual Ius Commune Conference. In this context, a selection of plenary sessions and workshops are held, which allow panellists to present their research and discuss topics closely related...

On the 29 and 30 of October 2020 the Academy of European Law hosted an online conference on the recent developments in the European Law of Civil Procedure. Over these two days different speakers presented on new developments with regards to key legal instruments such as the Brussels I (recast)...

The annual Ius Commune conference and its contract law workshop on “Contract law in times of corona and other sanitary crises”.

Over the few past years, there has been a professionalization of social media content creators. These creators now have the power to sway their followers, start trends, or serve as role models for their audiences. These individuals, that have such online persuasive power, are called “influencers”...

Back in 2017, the European Court of Justice ruled in Asociación Profesional Elite Taxi v. Uber Systems Spain , SL (Case C-434/15) that Uber offers common transportation services and thus, ought to be regulated as such. Various European national courts subsequently made similar rulings against Uber...

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...

Case C-80/19 E.E. – Do Latin notaries qualify as ‘courts’ and are they bound by the rules of jurisdiction under the European Succession Regulation? By Katja Zimmermann

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.

The workshop will focus on different contributions that identify potential legal wrongs arising out of decentralization, with the goal of exploring old and new remedies (both substantive and procedural) that could correct them, while emphasizing the role of technology in delivering these potential...

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...

By Dr. Julieta Marotta, Deputy Academic Director, MPP, UNU-MERIT/MGSoG

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.

Case of Lópex Ribalda and others v.s Spain, ECtHR 09 January 2018 appl. 1874/13 and 8567/13 and Case of Antovic and Mirkovic v. Montenegro, EctHR 28 November 2017, 70838/13

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)

​Call to Participate in a Questionnaire on Dispute Resolution Clauses.

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)

What are the consequences of a possible NEXIT and what are the pros and cons thereof?

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...

Announcing the Technolaweeks!

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

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...

by Ella Rosenberg

This post is co-written by Dr. Jill Robbie (Glasgow University) and Anna Berlee (MEPLI fellow). It is a cross-post from the...

What is the role of the law in addressing the issues faced by the contemporary consumer, and who should be its maker?

What is the role of the law in addressing the issues faced by the contemporary consumer, and who should be its maker?

The Harvard Professor v. The Chinese Restaurant

Program on International Commercial Mediation for motivated Master students with an interest in mediation.

by Ge Jiangqiu & Luo Liuhu

USER_BASED LAW Call for Applications. Apply by 20 November.

The phenomenon of the inverted-U curve - could it be doing more harm than good?

Organisers: Professor Stephen Weatherill & Dr Dorota Leczykiewicz Thursday 27 March 2014 until Friday 28 March 2014

Should this symbolic change of French law be applauded?

On the two-day conference in Liège entitled ‘Nudging in Europe’.

By Ralph Diederen

The Annual Meeting of the American Society for Legal History (ASLH) in Miami, Florida.

What is the basis for the claim of the ‘remaining’ EUR 4.875.000?

M-EPLI Talk entitled ‘A Multidimensional System of Commercial Law’.

On the language we use when we debate questions of European Private Law.

By William Bull & Pavel Tehlar

“M-EPLI encourages its student fellows to actively participate in all the activities of the institute, which includes blogging. It is therefore with pleasure that we introduce you to Pavel Tehlar, one of our (former) student fellows who wrote an interesting piece on the Euromortgage.”

Depicting a legal dispute arising out of the enforcement of a surrogacy agreement.

As a business, a law school must ensure that the product they are selling, its graduates, meet the demands of the academic community, the legal profession and the society.

Rethinking how we make our value judgments, not just by asking a litany of “why questions”, but through a more systematic process – as advocated by Hage – enables us to debate with one another at a much deeper level, rather than settling for a superficial conversation based on our (sometimes flawed...

The CJEU delivered its judgement in Citroën Belux NV v. Federatie voor Verzekerings- en Financiële Tussenpersonen (FvF)), a case surrounding Directive 2005/29/EC on unfair commercial practices (UCPD) and Art. 56 TFEU.

Thoughts on the outcome of the negotiation session performed by students where they combined an academic EU perspective on private law rules for the EU internal market, with a political perspective of a Member State.

Course on European Contract Law - how has it been in the past 5 years?

André van der Walt’s new book called ‘Property and Constitution’ in which he presents a roadmap to develop property law in South Africa.

Prof. Dr. Jan Smits on the David Cameron’s long awaited speech on the future of Europe.

Last week the book based on the 2012 conference was published by Hart Publishing under the title Objectivity in Law and Legal Reasoning.

This week, the book based on the conference on pluralism in European private law, organised by Leone Niglia of the University of Exeter, was published by Hart Publishing.

'Tang Prize' as the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Jiangqiu Ge - M-EPLI PhD researcher from China on the Contract Law Course at Maastricht European Law School.

EuNaCon marks its successful conclusion with a Closing Conference that takes place between 20-22 February 2013 in Maastricht, The Netherlands.

We as legal scholars should not only think about which topics can be better regulated at a higher (European) level, but also about when exactly a lower geographical level is better.

Effective solutions do not have to be taken by consensus, but can also come about by one or more courageous states acting unilaterally.

The Symposium is organised by the ULEP research project and LeCTra Research School (the University of Lapland) in cooperation with M-EPLI (the University of Maastricht).

The goal of this workshop is to assess how the better regulation agenda has shaped/can shape European private law, to assess the contribution of different approaches to achieve ‘better regulation’ and to assess opportunities and threats for European private law, in particular in respect with...

The Young Property Lawyers Forum (YPLF) is intended to provide a forum to especially those researchers for whom presenting and discussing their research will mean the most.

A one-day international conference aiming to evaluate EU Law’s evolution from one initially limited to the sphere of public law to its increasing stake in regulating private relationships.

While fragmentation is a well-known phenomenon in core areas of private law such as the law of contract, property and tort, it is much less studied in other fields.

Making use of the possibilities of present-day jurisdictional arbitrage may offer a viable and less expensive alternative to seasteading.

After more than eight years of work, the Ius Commune Casebook on Property Law - edited by M-EPLI fellow Sjef van Erp and Bram Akkermans, was published.

A new blog on the social sciences and related areas.

Constanze Semmelmann, lecturer EU law (University of St.Gallen, CH), visiting scholar, Institute for European Private Law (M-EPLI).

The integration level needed for a political union must certainly include private law, not only contract, but also family law, company law, tort law, property law and succession.

Conference in Turin on what social and legal theory has to offer in respect to how to tame the destructive expansionist tendencies in modern society.

The Maastricht Project on European Contract Law shows the importance of innovation in legal education and what students can do when we give them the possibility to take matters into their own hands.

Project aimed at analysing the role of law in hip hop music.

The closing conference of the project should be considered a first step to more and more legal systems opening up their legal borders to cross border conveyances, and not necessarily only within the EU.

The high position of Dutch universities is a small wonder in view of the ever-decreasing public funds available for fundamental research.

HiiL on the law of the future.

‘CISG Conference’ where experts on the international sale of goods came together to review the Vienna Convention in the light of similar structures such as its latest contender, the Common European Sales Law, or the UCC.

Mark Kawakami: " From a rather ignorant American’s perspective, the cost of learning, debating, and trying to apply the continuously changing (or “harmonizing”) European law is so cumbersome that perhaps it is doing more harm than good to the European legal framework ".

Max Planck Encyclopaedia of European Private Law re-affirms that the emergence of European private law is one of the most significant developments in present-day law.

Notes from a conference on European contract law organised by the University of Chicago Law School, where European academics and colleagues from Chicago discussed in particular the European Commission’s proposal for a common European sales law.

MEPLI’s one-day roundtable conference on choice in International Sale Law

Succession Regulation - a European Union instrument which primary aim it is to offer a choice of law to accommodate EU Citizens in intra-Union succession cases, whereby Member States are given a set of tools to circumvent the main aspects of its applicationa European Union instrument which primary...

Empirical research in legal scholarship: the value of applying regression models into legal analysithe value of applying regression models into legal analysis.

There are many questions as to how the landmark Regulation in EU property legislation will have to work.

The Centre for the Study of European Contract Law held its conference on the proposed Common European Sales Law in Amsterdam.

There was a workshop that took place at Tsinghua University School of Law, Beijing. It was the first meeting of the collaborators in a project which aims to investigate contract law in China and Europe in a comparative and cross-cultural perspective.

How does constitutional law look at the concept of ‘people’?

Property law's strong ties to the State and the national legal order lead to complications in cross-border settings. As a result, there is a tension between European integration and national property law.

M-EPLI organises a workshop in cooperation with Tsinghua University, School of Law devoted to contract law in China and Europe.

The need for a uniform interpretation of patent law need not be satisfied by a European Patent Court.