Mexico is currently facing an unprecedented social and political crisis, with expanding criminal and political violence, rampant impunity and crumbling political institutions. Next to the daily report of anonymous victims of violence, last summer in Central Mexico at least 15 citizens were executed…

Research into 25 years of lethal violence in the Netherlands and into language socialisation of deaf families in Africa will receive grants from the Leiden University Fund (LUF).

How can data analytics be used as a research method in the field of legal research? This question was addressed during the Research Lab Legal Data Science on 23 September, 2016.

Ever since the coronavirus crisis began, people have been arguing about the legal justification for measures. The problem: far-reaching measures such as an obligation to wear face masks, get tested, or school closures violate the Constitution. The Cabinet had the difficult task of weighing fundamental…

Identifying the gaps in the legal framework for EU activities in the maritime security domain, and specifically in the areas of combating piracy, human smuggling or trafficking and drug trafficking.

Abstract submission is now open for the international conference of the ELS Academy, in Amsterdam on September 1 and 2.

Recently, a new edition of the ELS bulletin was sent out. Furthermore, we are thrilled to share the Midterm Report of the ELS lab @Leiden with you!

On Friday 24 February Prof. Judith Masson, professor of Socio-legal Studies at Bristol University and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Science in the U.K., will deliver a lecture within the Leiden Socio-Legal Series.

This project aims to explore and examine the factors that impact upon the efficacy of information disclosure duties pertaining to customer data use in online business.

On Friday January 13 between 13.00 - 15.00 (room C 1.04 of the Old Observatory) there will be another Leiden Socio-Legal Lecture, entitled 'Constitutional Ethnography, Counter-Constitutions, and the Study of Form, Sediment and Trajectory'.

Citizens in multiple crime-ridden countries strongly support the militarization of security—that is, placing the military in charge of traditional policing duties. Yet, we know little about the determinants of such support. Do people approve of militarization even in the face of human fatalities? Political…

In the Netherlands, euthanasia has no longer been a criminal offence since 2002. The practice is governed by very strict conditions. Nonetheless, the legal issues surrounding it are still the focus of heated discussion, according to Leiden professors. They are discussing the issue on 18 March during…

This dissertation presents a legal geographical analysis of the heritage laws of the independent English-speaking islands of the Lesser Antilles.

On 5 June 2018 Emile Beenakker defended her doctoral thesis ‘The implementation of international law in the national legal order: A legislative perspective’. The doctoral research was supervised by Professor W.J.M. Voermans.

Municipalities are increasingly attempting to solve problems without issuing decisions. A notification procedure (notification – investigation – application – decision) has recently been introduced that replaces part of the traditional application procedure. Ymre Schuurmans, Professor of Constitutional…

The European Registry of Exonerations database provides an overview of miscarriages of justice in Europe with a view to preventing future errors.

It appears that interest groups are increasingly finding their way to court or other ways of making use of the legal system as a means for societal change. Over the summer, Rowie Stolk, PhD candidate at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law was one of the speakers at the workshop ‘Legal…

The international conference “Legal Reform in Indonesia: towards Justice” will be held on 6-7 September 2017 at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Assessing Learning in Higher Education addresses what is probably the most time-consuming part of the work of staff in higher education, and something to the complexity of which many of the recent developments in higher education have added. Getting assessment ‘right’– that is, designing and implementing…

Alumna Nadeshda Jayakody (25) from Australia graduated cum laude in Human Rights Law. What did she learn in Leiden that has been most useful? ‘I had to pretend that I already worked for an NGO.’

In the last two decades, there have been heated public and scholarly debates in France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands on the violent end of empire. Nevertheless, the broader comparative investigations into colonial counterinsurgency tend to leave atrocities such as torture, execution, and…

Legal action relating to the situation in Gaza is now being taken in various countries and courts around the world. In a podcast for ‘NPO-Radio1’, Larissa van Herik, Professor of Public International Law, outlines what is gained from these cases and the relationship between law, activism and politic…

On Saturday 30 June 2018, the Europa Institute hosted the 57th Leiden-London Meeting, with the overall title: “Agencies, Accountability and Association: Legal issues of agencies in the EU legal order and in relations with neighbouring States”.

On 11 January 2019, Maastricht University and the University of Groningen hosted a workshop on the regulation of social media influencers.

Data science offers great opportunities for legal research, according to Simone van der Hof and Bart Custers (eLaw). But at the same time, we have to keep an eye on the unwanted side effects of big data - such as ethnic profiling.

In a Leiden Law Blog, lab member Niek Strohmaier and Marc Broekema describe how their research on valuation biases was used by the Delaware Court of Chancery in a recent valuation dispute involving telecom giant AT&T.

The ERC-project CaPANES (Causal Pattern Analysis of Economic Sovereignty) is looking for a postdoctoral researcher and two PhD's. This project addresses economic sovereignty of commercial cities in the period of c. 1400-c. 1620. Deadline for applications: November 4.

For the project ‘Professionals and the People’ Tilburg University is looking for a historian with a PhD with passion for archival research. The postdoc will investigate the administrative culture and the functioning of urban civil servants in the Low Countries during the late Middle Ages and Early Modern…

Geert Wilders wants a stricter asylum policy, but is this realistic? Maartje van der Woude, Professor of Law and Society, and Mark Klaassen, assistant professor, spoke to NRC newspaper about the legal feasibility of Wilders' plans.

We know that armed conflict breeds conflict. We also know the political, economic and demographic factors that inform this repetition of conflict. But we do not understand why accumulated conflict risk factors sometimes do and other times do not pay out in more violence. What if we go beyond macro structural…

The Open University and Leiden University will join forces to offer a (Dutch-taught) Joint Legal Technologies Program for professionals. In doing so, they can provide the advanced legal informatics training that is necessary in our rapidly digitising society. The joint program is a further development…

It is one of the most talked-about subjects right now: how do we eradicate sexual harassment and violence? Alumnus Femke Eisma is the spokesperson for Mariëtte Hamer, the government commissioner tasked with tackling this persistent social problem. Eisma studied the Dutch language at Leiden. How is her…

Empirical legal studies is receiving more and more attention. At Leiden Law School, we have chosen the topic ‘markets, behaviour, and the regulatory role of the law’ as starting point to advance our empirical legal research. The goal is to bring together legal scholars and social scientists from across…

Thirty years ago, the Leiden Journal of International Law (LJIL) was born, at a time when the writing of histories was hardly a popular endeavor for international legal scholars. In his 1987 article ‘Probleme der Völkerrechtsgeschichte’ (‘The Problems of International Legal History’), Heinhard Steiger…

Why do communities form militias to defend themselves against violence during civil war? Using original interviews with former combatants and civilians and archival material from extensive fieldwork in Mozambique, Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) explains the timing,…

Ymre Schuurmans, Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law, has been appointed Chair of the Dutch Legal Aid Board’s Advisory Council following permission from the Dutch Minister for Legal Protection.