In 2012, Swedish power company Vattenfall went to an investor-state tribunal in response to the decision of Germany to close three Vattenfall nuclear power plants on its territory. The tribunal now has to decide whether Germany’s decision is in accordance with the international Energy Charter Treaty.…

Dr Brian McGarry, Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, addressed the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in the world's first advisory proceedings concerning climate change. His advocacy for the Commission of Small Island States…

Kutsal Yesilkagit, Professor of International Governance at the Institute of Public Administration, has been appointed by Minister Bruins Slot of the Interior and Kingdom Relations as a member of the State Commission on the Rule of Law, which was established in November 2022.

The German state of Saxony-Anhalt is set to make recognition of the state of Israel a requirement for becoming a German citizen. However, Peter Rodrigues, Emeritus Professor of Immigration Law, has told Dutch daily newspaper Nederlands Dagblad that introducing a similar measure in the Netherlands would…

The Council of State in the Netherlands has drawn up a programme of reflection to evaluate the role of the highest administrative court in the child benefits scandal and to learn lessons for the future.

From 26-30 June 2017 the first edition of the summer course on the Europeanisation of administrative law in the EU Member States took place in The Hague.

The Netherlands returned 478 artefacts to Indonesia and Sri Lanka this week, on the advice of a Dutch committee. Rightly so, says Leiden professor Pieter ter Keurs from the Museums, Collections and Society interdisciplinary research programme. ‘But do make it clear why you are returning something.’

A big performance by André Rieu, food trucks in The Hague and more contact with the Royal Family: grand plans were announced in April to make the State Opening of Parliament (Prinsjesdag) a real ‘crowd puller’. For this year, however, we will just have to make do with slight differences in emphasis.…

Linde Desmaele explores the role of US theatre nuclear weapons stationed in Europe. Moving beyond the deterrence vs. reassurance debate

How and to what extent does AI affect citizen representation in public service delivery and state-citizen interactions?

From receiving our salary to doing our shopping: we are completely dependent on commercial banks for all our payment transactions. But what happens if they collapse? In his inaugural lecture, Professor Bart Joosen calls for a rigorous change: ‘Put payment transactions for private clients under one…

How are law and governance in China responding to rapidly changing circumstances, and what does that mean for the relationship between the state and its citizens?

Large areas of space are filled by molecular clouds that consist of gas and dust grains that are the remnants of dead stars. When these clouds start collapsing, the decreasing temperature and increasing density cause gas particles to start accreting onto dust grain surfaces.

The inaugural Society for the Study of French History First Book Prize has been awarded to Lewis Wade’s monograph 'Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France: Marine Insurance, War and the Atlantic Empire under Louis XIV (Boydell Press, 2023)'.

Vice-rector Organisatieontwikkeling en oud-decaan FGGA Erwin Muller start op 1 april 2026 als staatsraad bij de Afdeling Advisering van de Raad van State.

Hungary belongs to the EU, but democracy is being seriously and systematically threatened there. Does the rest of the EU have the means and the political will to deal with member states that are out of step? Antoaneta Dimitrova, professor of 'Comparative Governance' at the Institute of Security and…

Daniel Peat will represent the ISDS Academic Forum, a group of over 150 academics whose research focusses on investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), at forthcoming discussions on the reform of the ISDS system taking place in New York.

USMCA (North American Free Trade Agreement) is the successor to NAFTA – a free trade zone covering Canada, the United States and Mexico. This Agreement includes a new procedure to ensure compliance with fundamental labour rights.

On Thursday 24 May 2018, Tanja Masson-Zwaan of Leiden University’s International Institute of Air and Space Law and Prof Mahulena Hofmann of the University of Luxembourg had the honour of addressing the King and Queen of the Netherlands and the Grand-Duc and Grand-Duchess of Luxembourg during the State…

The European Commission has started an investigation into possible illegal state aid from the Netherlands to Nike. It is high time that agreements between Tax Authorities and multinationals are made public, says Associate Professor in Tax Law Jan Vleggeert.

This article studies the securitization of immigration in the United States of America (U.S.), through the analysis of the National Security Strategies (NSS) published between 2002 and 2017, using a two-layered analytical framework that combines securitization theory and agenda setting theory.

Lydie Cabane, Assistant Professor in Governance of Crises at the Institute for Security and Global Affairs, recently published the book The Government of Disasters. In this book Lydie explores how the South African state bureaucracy reacts to disasters.

Carola Schoor, programme manager for Public Affairs at the Centre for Professional Learning (CPL), reflects on Politico on the State of the European Union speech by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen from a political strategy and messaging perspective.

In a new essay for Ethics & International Affairs, Dr Henning Lahmann, Assistant Professor of International Law & Technology at eLaw, addresses the question whether states should resort to social media to warn a civilian population ahead of military operations.

During the corona pandemic, the Chinese government's digital communication with its citizens changed. Hard propaganda was increasingly replaced by ‘soft news’. PhD candidate Dechun Zhang mapped the developments in digital society.

What is the impact of Indonesia’s democratization process on everyday state-citizen relations?

On 3 March 2024, the Swiss electorate decided in a sensational referendum in favour of an increase in the state old-age pension.

The Guardian interviewed professor Marlou Schrover about the increasing number of trans refugees from the United States.

Tech giants such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft are increasingly shaping the digital world we live in. Reijer Passchier cautions: 'Urgent measures are needed to curb this influence.'

The lecture series

De asielplannen van minster Faber leveren de nodige commotie op binnen politiek Den Haag. Wilders wil geen enkele concessies doen en dreigt met verkiezingen. De Raad van State oordeelt nl. negatief op de wetsvoorstellen. Wim Voermans, zegt in Nieuwsuur dat ‘de plannen juridisch net binnen de lijntjes…

Call for Papers for the conference Relocating Governance in Asia: state and society in South- and Southeast Asia, c. 1800-2000, Leiden University, 22-24 January 2020.

On Tuesday 22 January 2019, Beryl ter Haar participated in a comparative law lecture featuring labour law cases of the constitutional court of South Africa at the Kutafin State Law University Moscow, Russia. Topics discussed included short term employment contracts, the right to strike and the right…

How to deal with the Pyongyang regime? Is North Korea irrational? Prof. Remco Breuker proposes a new approach.

22 November 2018.

On the 28th of January 2019 Beryl ter Haar gave a guest lecture at Tbilisi State University organised by the European Law School Association (ELSA). The lecture addressed issues of EU fundamental rights, more particularly it was on the freedom to conduct a business versus several labour rights, among…

How can the emergence of primary justice systems be facilitated and furthered?

How should we address our colonial heritage? And how digital and accessible are our collections? Outgoing State Secretary Fleur Gräper spoke with researchers and heritage specialists about this on 25 January.

The new welfare state is said to be close to its citizens and does not dominate, but cooperate. “But this paradigm has a hard time to acknowledge the power relation that shapes the relation between state and citizens,” says Anouk de Koning in the interview 'The Downsides of Equality Talk in the Welfare…

Researchers from the Leiden Institute of Chemistry show proof of principle that live-cell structural changes and metabolic processes can be followed in real time with NMR spectroscopy. They performed their study on photosynthetic green algae that are metabolically flexible and can sustain energy generation…

How did dynastic organization – that it, the employment of non-ruling family members and the development of dynastic traditions and concepts – influence state formation in both Catholic Europe and Muslim West-Asia?

Esteban Szmulewic , PhD candidate at the Constitutional and Administrative Law Department has written a paper on the comparison between Italy and the Netherlands, covering the first part of the pandemic (2020 and early 2021). The article has been published in the prestigious 'Journal Diritto Publico…

On Thursday 28 January 2016, Prof. Carsten Stahn contributed to the OPCW Sub-Working Group on Non-State Actors, together with Professors Andrew Clapham (Geneva) and Dapo Akande (Oxford), in the presence of the Ahmet Üzümcü, Director-General of the OPCW.

On 30 January, GTGC hosted a special event together with the Embassy of Ireland. As part of his visit to the Netherlands, John Concannon, Director General of the Global Ireland Unit of the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, came to the university to engage in a discussion about Ireland's role in international…

The Netherlands will comply with the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) against Netanyahu and proceed to arrest him as soon as he enters Dutch territory. Jens Iverson,Assistant Professor of Public International Law, discusses the issue in Dutch daily newspaper ‘Trouw’.

Two citizens, together with organisations including Amnesty International, antidiscrimination agency RADAR and the Dutch Section of the International Commission of Jurists (NJCM) have brought legal action against the State. They want the court to put an end to the discriminating border controls of the…

The main objective of this thesis was to develop clinically relevant survival models for patients with high-grade soft tissue sarcoma of the extremities, in particular the development and validation of prediction models for use in clinical practice.

In Belgium, officially recognised religions receive financial support from the state. Partly as a result, there is no clearly implemented secularism (separation of church and state) though this is considered to be a guiding notion in modern constitutional theories. PhD candidate Alain Vannieuwenburg…