Montesquieu Institute
The Montesquieu Institute Maastricht is a research centre dedicated to European and comparative parliamentary studies. Montesquieu's 'formula' for the organisation of a sustainable and democratic society has to a large extent determined the organisation of many 'modern' parliamentary democracies. However, this formula provides some challenging questions: is it still applicable nowadays? One of the objectives of the inter-university Montesquieu Institute is to stimulate both Dutch and foreign scientiok for answers to this kind of questions. It is a collaboration between, amongst others, UM, Leiden University and the University of Groningen.
Research
The Montesquieu Institute Maastricht focuses on parliamentary systems of government in Europe and in the European Union, on aspects of separation of power, democracy and the rule of law and human rights. The Institute’s aim is to contribute to the academic and public debate on democracy and governance in the European Union and its member-states by deepening the understanding of the constitutional structures and political practice of national systems of parliamentary government and rule of law and democracy. It takes a thoroughly comparative approach to parliamentary studies in a European context and analyses national systems in a vertical multi-layered perspective.
With its focus, the constitutional law research is well suited to the faculty and university themes related to globalisation, Europeanisation and comparative law, as laid down in the two research streams about Values and Institutions.
Visit Montesquieu's research
Montesquieu’s research mainly takes place in the following streams:
1. Values
2. Institutions
Montesquieu news
Appointment of Dr Joost Sillen as Professor of Constitutional Law
The Executive Board has appointed Dr Joost Sillen as Professor of Constitutional Law (1.0 FTE) as of 1 September 2022. He succeeds Prof.
Research grant for Monica Claes and Maarten Stremler
Professor Monica Claes and assistant professor Maarten Stremler have received a grant from the Statesman Thorbecke Fund of the Royal Neth
Montesquieu blogs
The fragility of the familiar: how Boris Johnson exposed the tenuous nature of the UK Constitution
“Life happens when you are busy making plans”, John Lennon once said. To his chagrin, Boris Johnson, who was counting on winning a third term (despite only being two years into his first), realized that Lennon certainly had a point there. What we witnessed in frenzied television reports from London was both the normality and the abnormality of politics.
House of Cards: when your worst enemy is one of your own
In the 1980s, in the heyday of Thatcherism, Scottish actor Ian Richardson starred in the leading role of Francis Urquhart in the BBC series House of Cards. In it, Urquhart, who starts out as the Chief Whip for the Conservative government led by Thatcher’s fictional successor, schemes against and manipulates his fellow MPs in order to emerge as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Indeed, it was this BBC version that provided the blueprint for the eponymous US Netflix drama that was all the rage during the Obama Years.
Johan Rudolph Thorbecke
(1798-1872). Dutch liberal statesman. Drafted the 1848 revision of the Dutch Constitution that established the parliamentary system.
Montesquieu
Since the educational spaces in our faculty have all been named, we would like to tell about the background of the elected jurists and cases. Through a series of blogs we want to make the names come to life and show that our building houses a legal faculty. After all, not everyone knows all the ins and outs of these persons and cases. What makes them so special? Several colleagues will talk about these individuals and cases in the coming months. In this second edition you can read all about Montesquieu.
Choreography of sound and fury: The federal constitutional court’s recent PSPP judgment
The recent verdict (“the PSPP judgment”) of the German Federal Constitutional Court (“FCC”) on the compatibility of the Public Sector Purchase Programme (“the Programme”) under the management of the European Central Bank (“ECB”) has attracted plenty of commentary, much of it critical concerning the reasoning of the judgment. The following contribution shall attempt to contextualize the PSPP judgment in the framework of the FCC’s historical jurisprudence and seek to gain an initial understanding whether the judgment does indeed represent a threat to the legal order of the European Union (“EU”).
