Het Leids onderzoek naar gedwongen uithuisplaatsingen van kinderen heeft veel stof doen opwaaien. Op een congres bespraken meer dan 250 mensen het onderzoek verder om zo de situatie voor ouders en kinderen in de toekomst te verbeteren.

Education, Research

Tackling radicalisation among young people is a complex issue in which government authorities may choose to apply legal measures. PhD student Nina van Capelleveen examined the risks such legal instruments can pose to the fundamental rights of minors.

Life returned to something resembling normal after Covid but other crises soon took its place. These great challenges are also being felt at the University and our researchers are working on solutions. The nitrogen crisis, problems with young people’s services and an increasingly urgent climate crisis:…

Since 1 November 2022, Brechtje Paijmans is endowed professor of Conflict Resolution and Legal Protection in Education. Dutch trade journal Mr. interviewed her about her appointment.

UNESCO has recognized a large collection of handwritten letters and the archive of Raden Ajeng Kartini (1879-1904) as documentary world heritage. Kartini opposed gender inequality in feudal Javanese society, including forced marriages, polygamy and lack of education for women.

‘Om de problemen in de jeugdbescherming op te kunnen lossen heb ik de gemeenten nodig’, zei minister Weerwind van Rechtsbescherming onlangs in de Tweede Kamer. Maar volgens hoogleraar jeugdrecht Mariëlle Bruning moet het rijk stoppen met het verwijzen naar andere partijen en zélf nu zorgen dat de boel…

Moot Court

Wat gebeurt er op het schoolplein? Sensoren op kleding openbaren pijnlijke patronen

Dr Claire Achmad has taken up the role of Aotearoa New Zealand’s Chief Children’s Commissioner from 1 November 2023, for a term of five years.

The opening of the new academic year highlighted students' and lecturers' personal motivators. Incoming students were encouraged to be bold, forge their own paths and grow by trial and error.

Lots of employees celebrated special successes in 2023. Here’s a list of all those scholarships, awards and honours.

Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, visited Leiden Law School on 8 December within the scope of International Human Rights Day.

Parents are not always heard before their children’s placement in care is extended. They can only have their say if they ask the judge for a hearing themselves. ‘It should be the other way round,’ says Mariëlle Bruning, Professor of Child Law in a ‘De Nieuws BV’ broadcast.

Leiden Law Cast is a podcast made by Leiden Law School, Leiden University, for everyone who wants to learn more about current legal issues.

Around seven per cent of children have difficulty learning their mother tongue because they have some form of developmental language disorder (DLD). World DLD Day on 15 October called attention to this disorder. Development psychologist Neeltje van den Bedem explains why this is important.

In its ruling this week, The Hague Court of Appeal made short work of how the Dutch Border Police allow the colour of a person’s skin to be taken into account when selecting people to check. According to Maartje van der Woude, this ruling reaches far beyond the border police. ‘This is a problem for…

On Friday 15 January, the Dutch ‘Rutte III’ government resigned following the scathing report on the childcare benefits scandal. What are the political consequences?

As of 1 May 2025, Professor Kartica van der Zon has been appointed professor by special appointment of Family Law, Law of Persons and Juvenile Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen.

People from the Dutch islands of Bonaire, Saba and Sint Eustatius say that violence (mainly verbal) is fairly common in families. This is according to research by Leiden University, the University of Curaçao and UNICEF Netherlands. The researchers make recommendations for preventing such violence over…

Egbert Jongen researches income inequality in the Netherlands. Where are the differences and what can we do about them? This Professor of Economics and Socioeconomic Policy will explain more in his inaugural lecture on 1 July. ‘We can learn from countries with less difference between men and women and…

Only one in five young people with emotional health problems such as an anxiety disorder receives appropriate professional help. GPs often fail to properly recognise the signals in children and young people, according to psychologist Semiha Aydin. How can we improve this? PhD defence 23 February.

The Individual Choices Model offers a number of options for buying or saving additional leave days, or exchanging leave days for extra income.

Until now, systematic discussions of gender, race and law have received little attention from Dutch law faculties, especially at the undergraduate teaching level. At the same time, public calls for discussion of these issues increases rapidly.

On the occasion of the conferral of an honorary doctorate to children’s rights activist Graça Machel, a fund has been established that will enable two female students from South Africa to come and study in Leiden.

Recently, Hans-Martien ten Napel was in the news on the above subject several times.

Angry politicians, angry journalists: the initiative of Forum for Democracy politician Gideon van Meijeren during which he secretly filmed a reporter portraying them as a ‘sewer rat’, caused a lot of anger. Where does all this commotion come from? Wouter Hins: ‘Calling a journalist a "sewer rat" is…

Children who come into contact with the police are not destined to become long-term offenders. This appears from research conducted by Babette van Hazebroek, who defends her dissertation on 30 September 2021.

On 24 March 2023, the University of Tartu, Estonia hosted a Workshop on ‘'Algorithms, Rule of Law, and the Future of Justice: Implications in the Estonian Justice System’.

Youth crime has plummeted in the Netherlands. Good news, you might think. Yet we need to look critically at existing sanctions, says Professor by Special Appointment André van der Laan in his inaugural lecture. ‘We should evaluate whether our response is just.’

Professor Dr. Carsten Stahn LLM., Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at the University of Leiden, completed his habilitation in July 2020 at the Humboldt-University zu Berlin and acquired the Venia for Constitutional Law, International Law and International Criminal Law. The…

Staff at Dutch youth care services sometimes put parents under pressure to cooperate 'voluntarily'. There are instances when children are removed from the home without the approval of the court. This may have some benefits from the perspective of the support services, but in legal circles there are…

Pensions not tailored to the self-employed, working mothers with stagnant salaries and people unable to find work due to incapacity. Pim Koopmans was recently awarded a PhD from Leiden University for his research on these issues and the corresponding financial risks.

Amid rising polarisation and discrimination, lawyer and human rights activist Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You wants to show in her Cleveringa Lecture on 26 November how dangerous exclusion is.

Legal protection in education is something of a neglected child: oddly split between administrative law and civil courts. Brechtje Paijmans is calling attention to this issue as Professor by Special Appointment of Conflict Resolution and Legal Protection in Education.