Prof Dr L.C.A. (Leon) Verstappen, LLM

Leon Verstappen (born 8 March 1965) is since December 1st 1998 full professor of civil and notary law at the department of Private Law and Notary Law of the University of Groningen. He is legal advisor to Hekkelman Lawyers & Notaries in Arnhem and Nijmegen, member of the board of governors of the Foundation Grotius Academy and of the Foundation for Professional Training of Notaries, member of the Supervision Board of the Foundation for the advancement of Notary Science in Amsterdam. He was former head of the Department of Private en Notary Law (2002-2005) and former Dean of the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen (2006-2010).

Leon Verstappen is editor/annotator of a number of periodicals (i.e. Weekblad voor Privaatrecht, Notariaat en Registratie (WPNR) and Nederlandse Jurisprudentie (NJ)) and joint editor-in-chief of a series on civil (notary) law: Real Property Law, Family Law, Estate Settlement and Company Law.

Leon Verstappen is founder and academic director of the Groningen Centre for Law and Governance as well as founder and board member of the Netherlands Institute for Law and Governance (a cooperation of Law Faculties of the Free University Amsterdam and the University of Groningen, in which other academic institutions participate). He is founder and chair of the International Alliance on Land Tenure and Administration (IALTA), member of the Steering Committee Land Portal Partnership, Rome (on behalf of IALTA) and member of the European Law Institute.

His international activities consist of i.e. several projects in Asia and Africa. He participated in the MHO project ´Upgrading Teaching and Research in Economics, Business and Law, in Vietnam´ (Can Tho University, Vietnam) and in the Asia Facility for China 2006-project: ´ProLAND on Chinese land tenure and land governance´. He participates in the cooperation between Cadastre China and Cadastre Netherlands to improve land registration in China and in the joint project of the Universities of Leiden and Groningen ‘Building blocks for the rule of law’ by lecturing staff members of several leading Chinese and Indonesian universities and governmental institutions on the subject of land law and family law. In 2013 the LANGPLE project (Farmland Acquisition and Governance in China: Participatory Learning and Experimentation) financed by the Ford Foundation in Beijing, was successfully completed.

Leon Verstappen supervises PhD studies on land tenure security in China, Vietnam and Indonesia as well as a comparative European study on third party protection in real estate law. Besides these PhD projects, he supervises several PhD thesis on Dutch land law. He currently is working on an international research program on land within the context of IALTA. See www.ialtanetwork.org.

His teaching and research focus mainly on the field of real estate law, matrimonial property law, inheritance law and related tax laws. He published in these fields of research more than 150 scientific articles and 75 books and contributions to books.

Go to the staff page of Leon Verstappen.