Headlines

Nina Mileva, Associate Professor of Public International Law, talks about her mini-quiz recap strategy, called the "Quick Review Quiz.

Marlies Hesselman, assistant professor of international law at our Faculty, acted as a consultant for the National Human Rights Institute on their first report on the Dutch, regional and international legal framework for the 'right to a healthy environment' in the Netherlands. The report was published on 20 June.

Maarten Bouwmeester, PhD candidate at our Faculty’s Department of Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and Public Administration, has been awarded a Cultural Fund grant for a research stay. He will be spending three months in Australia next year thanks to the scholarship to work on his doctoral research ‘System failure in the digital welfare state’.

What exactly does the right to demonstrate entail? What may and must the government do in the event of demonstrations, and what rights and obligations do protesters have? Demonstration expert Berend Roorda receives questions on this subject almost daily from the media and legal practitioners, especially now that protests are very topical in the Netherlands. With a new website, he makes all knowledge and regulations accessible to everyone.

After summer, the Young Academy Groningen will again welcome seven new members. Their research covers a wide variety of topics, ranging from speech technology to the philosophy of ethics and politics and polymer chemistry.

On 10 June, the State Commission on the Rule of Law, of which Prof. Marc Hertogh of our faculty is a member, published its advisory report on the functioning of the rule of law. In the report, titled 'The Broken Promise of the Rule of Law: Ten Proposals for Improvement with an Eye on the Citizen', the State Commission concludes that the rule of law has been long neglected by the government.

On 6 and 7 June, the Faculty of Law at the University of Groningen hosted a delegation from the Arts Faculty of Macquarie University (which also houses the Law branch at that university). The focus of the strategic partnership between the UG and Macquarie University is on joint doctorates.

Today, the report “Beyond Ecstasy” by the State Committee on MDMA was presented to outgoing Medical Care Minister Pia Dijkstra. In the report, the State Committee calls for larger-scale research into the use of MDMA in therapy for people suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

With this initiative, the researchers aim to meet the growing need for information about the right to freedom of peaceful assembly (the right to protest). The website consists of an extensive list of answers to frequently asked questions, a knowledge base with the most recent case law and an advice tool on the basis of which free customized legal advice can be obtained. To develop the website and keep it up-to-date for three years, funding was granted by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations in the fall of 2023. The website is independent; the Ministry has not interfered with its content. All information on the website is available in Dutch and freely accessible to everyone.

Prof. Willem Janssen, Extraordinary Professor of Procurement Law at our Faculty, has been invited by the European Commission to share his expertise. He will give his views on future public procurement at the meeting on 30 May 2024, where all EU member states are represented.

The Women in Solidarity for Energy (WISE) project, led by Dr Marlies Hesselman of the Faculty of Law among others, has been awarded funding from the European Union's Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) funding system.

Aurélie Villanueva, assistant professor European Union Law at our Faculty, has been awarded the Proxime Accessit Prize of the European law Faculties Association (ELFA). She received the prize for her dissertation titled ‘Culture in European Union Law: Between Market and Society’, which she defended last year at the European University Institute in Florence.

Lolke Braaksma, assistant professor of environmental law at our Faculty, has won one of the five Research Prizes of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation. He was awarded the prize for his PhD thesis 'The programmatic approach in environmental law: Towards a legal design in the European Union and the Netherlands that pursues sustainability'.

On 17 May 2024, the Faculty of Law was honoured to receive a delegation from Fakultas Hukum Universitas Indonesia.

Prof. Brigit Toebes and Dr Michelle Bruijn have been awarded a grant from funding organization Zonmw. The project is titled 'Alcohol regulation: navigating between allowing and prohibiting'.

Aline Klingenberg, professor of IT-Law at the Faculty of Law, was recently appointed by the Executive Board of the University of Groningen as a member of the Temporary Committee on Student Data.

Dr Marlies Hesselman and David Patterson, LL.M., are co-authors of a publication in the leading health journal The Lancet. The article they co-authored is titled “Collective action and legal mobilisation for the right to health in the climate crisis”.

Marc Hertogh has been appointed as faculty professor at the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance of Utrecht University as of 1 May 2024. He will fill the position part-time and will also remain Professor of Law and Society at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen.

Manolis Kotzampasakis has been awarded a prestigious Fulbright Schuman Grant for doctoral research at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Law.

The persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, the wars in former Yugoslavia, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, terrorist attacks, sexual violence: all raise the question of who is capable of such things. What kind of people are behind these atrocities and what motivates them? Alette Smeulers, professor of international crimes at the University of Groningen, researches perpetrators of extreme forms of mass and political violence. Her conclusion: 'The biggest mistake we can make is thinking that a perpetrator is completely different from ourselves.'