Latest blog articles

The debate on the implications of Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia recently intensified after a report concluded that the Dutch forces had used extreme violence. Reactions to the report reveal that the issue remains controversial and challenging to discuss. The findings in the report do however...

In the 1980s, in the heyday of Thatcherism, Scottish actor Ian Richardson starred in the leading role of Francis Urquhart in the BBC series House of Cards. In it, Urquhart, who starts out as the Chief Whip for the Conservative government led by Thatcher’s fictional successor, schemes against and...

About a year ago, this blog published my contribution “Let us not forget about EU fundamental rights,” which addressed the situation at the EU’s external borders. At the time, the decision of the ECtHR in the case of N.D and N.T v. Spain, was heavily criticised for failing to protect the right to...

In the fall of last year, the Dutch Raad voor Cultuur has issued an advice on how the Dutch government and Dutch museums (and the broader public in the Netherlands in general) should deal with the continuing presence of colonial-era heritage in Dutch museum collections. The report constitutes a...

It is most appropriate that a classroom in our Faculty of Law at University Maastricht has been named after someone who was a legal legend in his own country (Nigeria) and was the first legal luminary of exceptional quality in the African world: Judge Taslim Olawale Elias.

“Those who can make you believe absurdities; can make you commit atrocities” (Voltaire). When reading about the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide it is difficult to understand how such events could ever have taken place. How can a society turn on a particular group and send them to death camps? How...

(1798-1872). Dutch liberal statesman. Drafted the 1848 revision of the Dutch Constitution that established the parliamentary system.

Simone Veil passed away on 30 June 2017, just two weeks shy of her 90^th birthday. The fact that her funeral was a national ceremony at the Hȏtel des Invalides, and that her remains have been interred in the Panthéon - as one of the four women who have been bestowed with this honour because of their...

How do we guarantee access to COVID-19 vaccines and therapies, and secure health-related human rights for all? We’ve heard a string of promises in the race for new vaccines and therapies.

Since the educational spaces in our faculty have all been named, we would like to tell about the background of the elected jurists and cases. Through a series of blogs we want to make the names come to life and show that our building houses a legal faculty. After all, not everyone knows all the ins...