Timely research sheds light on failings in Dutch administrative law
How can administrative law better protect citizens against the government? A topical and pressing question, says PhD candidate Joyce Esser. On 23 June 2026, she defended her dissertation at Leiden University and was awarded the highest distinction: cum laude.
The central focus in Esser’s research is the concept of ‘constitutional culture’: shared legal understandings that shape how society handles the relationship between government, citizens, and the courts. This determines what the government may and may not do, how decisions are made, and what options citizens and businesses have to challenge government action. By comparing the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States, Esser shows how deep-rooted ideas about democratic legitimacy and legal protection have shaped administrative law differently in each country, and how each system reviews government action against broader norms and values in its own way.
A new and more effective model
Esser provides a thorough analysis of the Dutch system: traditional administrative law relied too heavily on the neutrality and goodwill of the government and limited the role of the courts to only assessing whether legal boundaries were exceeded in individual cases. The Child Benefits Scandal in the Netherlands exposed, painfully, what happens when that assumption fails. Esser argues for a model in which the courts not only assess individual decisions, but can also consider the policy behind decisions. This model would give citizens and interest groups the opportunity to bring the actual ‘moment’ of administrative policymaking before the courts.
Esser’s conclusion is both critical and optimistic: Dutch administrative law is undergoing change, but the transition towards meaningful improvements requires more than just technical amendments. The dissertation is published at a time when policymakers are actively searching for ways to prevent a repeat of the Child Benefits Scandal. Proposals aimed at strengthening administrative law, improving legal protection, and subjecting government policy to more critical judicial review are high on the political agenda.
A review of the legal system
By not only identifying what went wrong, but also demonstrating how other legal systems draw the balance between democracy and legal protection in different ways, Esser provides policymakers, judges, and scholars with clear points of reference. That a dissertation situated at the intersection of legal theory and contemporary governance has been awarded the highest distinction underscores both the urgency of the questions Esser raises and the scholarly quality of the answers she has formulated.
In a packed Telders Auditorium, Esser defended her dissertation before an impressive PhD opposition committee. Ymre Schuurmans praised the PHD candidate for the ‘originality, depth, and societal relevance of the study, which is also written with remarkable clarity. With this work, Esser has made an important contribution to the debate and to the development of comparative law as a research method.’ The committee was unanimous in awarding her the distinction of cum laude.