February 16, 2013
by Jan Smits
0 comments
Now that David Cameron’s long awaited speech on the future of Europe lies a few weeks behind us, and we have been able to digest most of the reactions, it is time to make up the balance. One very positive … Continue reading
February 4, 2013
by Jan Smits
0 comments
On 25 March 2011 Leone Niglia of the University of Exeter organised a small conference on pluralism in European private law. This was a very welcome initiative. While pluralist thinking had become well known in fields such as European constitutional … Continue reading
February 4, 2013
by Jan Smits
0 comments
Every five years or so legal theorists from Belgium and the Netherlands meet with their colleagues from the Scandinavian countries. This is a tradition that started in the early 1980’s at the initiative of Mark van Hoecke who rightly felt … Continue reading
January 28, 2013
by Jan Smits
0 comments
It was announced today that one of Taiwan’s richest men, Mr. Samuel Yin, has created an Asian version of the Nobel Prize. With an amount of over one million euro, this ‘Tang Prize’ will be even more lucrative than the … Continue reading
This week the American political scientist Benjamin Barber visited the Netherlands. He gave a lecture in Utrecht on his new book ‘If Mayors Ruled the World.’ Barbers claim is both intriguing and important. It is well known that an ever increasing number of … Continue reading
In the last two weeks more than 17.000 delegates gathered in Doha (Quatar) for the 18th round of the Climate Change Conference. As in previous years, expectations are low that any enforceable agreement will be reached today to reduce greenhouse … Continue reading
October 16, 2012
by Jan Smits
0 comments
My students in the 2011 MARBLE-HiiL course have just published a little book that contains the papers they wrote on how to see the role of law in a globalising world. It contains contributions written by the six students who participated … Continue reading
This month EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding announced that she will initiate a ‘justice scoreboard’ that will rank the rule of law in EU member states. It will benchmark the ‘strength, efficiency and reliability’ of each EU jurisdiction in an … Continue reading
September 2, 2012
by Jan Smits
0 comments
It is no surprise that today’s private law is fragmented as a result of increasing Europeanisation. Next to age-old national legislation and case law, private law today is increasingly shaped by European and supranational sources and by private regulation. As … Continue reading
August 27, 2012
by Jan Smits
0 comments
In the last few months I have been following the developments around the so-called Seasteading Institute. This institute founded by Patri Friedman (grandson of Chicago economist Milton Friedman and an original thinker and entrepreneur in his own right) is co-funded … Continue reading
Edward Elgar Publishing just launched a new blog on the social sciences and related areas. It can be found here. I had the pleasure to write a blog on the question what legal academics actually do.
June 9, 2012
by Jan Smits
3 Comments
In the last few months I have been working with three enthusiastic Maastricht students in a project aimed at analysing the role of law in hip hop music. My own interest in this theme stems from a fascination for the … Continue reading
June 5, 2012
by Jan Smits
0 comments
Today was a day of both sadness and of pride for the Dutch academic community. At an impressive event in Amsterdam Robbert Dijkgraaf said formally farewell as President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He will leave … Continue reading
June 3, 2012
by Jan Smits
0 comments
One of my activities on the HiiL Visiting Chair on the Internationalisation of Law is teaching a course on The Law of the Future. This year the course, that is also part of an initiative on Maastricht Research Based Learning … Continue reading
May 6, 2012
by Jan Smits
0 comments
I just received the impressive new Max Planck Encyclopedia of European Private Law. This two volume-work containing more than 2000 pages is the joint effort of a large group of authors all associated (or once associated) with the Max Planck … Continue reading