In his book ‘Constitutional Idolatry and Democracy’, Brian Christopher Jones describes constitutional idolatry as ‘drastically or persistently over-selling the importance and effects of written constitutions’.  For a scholar trained in Dutch constitutional law this is a rather foreign concept. Although the Dutch Constitution (hereafter: Constitution) is one of the oldest in the world, the Netherlands is…

Early 2020, the European Commission recognized in the preamble of its White Paper on Artificial Intelligence that AI ‘entails a number of potential risks’ including ‘gender-based or other kinds of discrimination’. It therefore deemed ‘important to assess whether [EU law] can be enforced adequately to address the risks that AI systems create, or whether adjustments…

On 10 September 2020, ransomware infected 30 servers at University Hospital Düsseldorf, crashing systems and forcing the hospital to turn away emergency patients. As a result, German authorities stated, a woman in a life-threatening condition was sent to a hospital 20 miles away in Wuppertal and died from treatment delays. On 28 September, another alarming news article stated that ‘a…

On 10 October 2018, ‘Convention 108’ of the Council of Europe regarding the ‘automatic processing of personal data’ (1985) was updated. Convention 108+ now explicitly incorporates the processing of personal data in a national security context. The Netherlands signed Convention 108+ on 10 October 2018 and is now in the ratification process. Surprisingly, Convention 108+ did not gain much…

Is it possible to avoid a conflict between EU and national law that would result in a national court disapplying the conflicting national provision? Under certain circumstances, the duty of consistent interpretation can offer a solution. For example: two individuals conclude a sales contract, which one subsequently claims is void under EU law whereas the…

In some recent blog posts, Italian star philosopher Giorgio Agamben frames the governmental response to the outbreak of the coronavirus in Italy and elsewhere as ‘frenetic, irrational and entirely unfounded’. According to Agamben, Covid-19 is not too different from the normal flus that affect us every year. The governmental reaction to the outbreak would be…

The International Criminal Court (ICC) turns 18 years old in 2020. As such, we can look back on the Court’s ‘childhood’ and forward to its first year as an adult.  Like all childhoods, there have been ups and downs, successes and lessons learned. There have been four final convictions against individuals for crimes against humanity…

‘The lack of implementation of the D.H. judgment deeply concerns the three submitting organizations…’. This sentence is taken from a Rule 9 Communication submitted by three NGOs to the Committee of Ministers, the body that supervises the execution of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (hereafter: ECtHR or Court). It is illustrative of…

You are sitting at your desk – as an academic, lawyer, policy maker or judge. You are pondering a legal issue and need to figure out what the law on this matter means for the question at hand. It can be as simple as having to decide whether a tricycle falls under the local prohibition…

Legal philosophers are often criticised for being out of touch with legal practice. At best, their theories provide a highly abstract but dated understanding of what law is. In a recent prize-winning book entitled A Realistic Theory of Law legal philosopher Brian Tamanaha argues that this often heard critique is true. Many legal philosophers fail to adequately…