Latest blog articles

  • Overcoming the pitfalls of anachronisms – and why this matters to all of us

    Every now and again, and especially when redesigning a curriculum, the question regarding the role and place of legal history in said curriculum is brought up. And rightly so. That is why the Open University Law School (UK) organized an online event on 15 December entitled Diversity, Dilemmas and...

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  • Democracy and Nihilism: denouncing contemporary populist rhetoric

    In this piece, I will use two memes to begin to unpack what I think is the common denominator of contemporary populist rhetoric. I will explain that the real substance of this rhetoric is the creation of a false moral equivalence, revealing a nihilism. Finally, I will suggest how this false moral...

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  • Legal science through the lens of fairy tales

    Fairy tales, when understood as manuals of behaviour that are shared within the household, can serve as a means to study and understand the law at a specific time and space. This claim is not new. The Grimm Brothers, the renowned scholars Friedrich C. von Savigny (1779-1861) and John H. Wigmore...

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  • EU agencies and Turkey – mode of differentiated integration?

    The European Union (EU) and Turkey have a long and multifaceted relationship. In this entry (based on a recent longer analysis) we focus on Turkey’s involvement with the EU’s decentralised agencies, and more particularly on whether and to what extent this involvement can be viewed as a part of a...

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  • Electromagnetic interferences in the language of the law

    Language plays a fundamental role as a channel for law. It can enable members of society to access justice. Conversely, an inadequate use of language may result in a dissociation of law from a specific society. Language is a fundamental means to convey messages, to know the law, and to shape the law...

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  • Boards of appeal of EU agencies at a crossroads

    The Boards of Appeal established for the decision-making agencies perform a function that lies between exercising administrative review, at the one end, and offering judicial review, at the other. It is still unclear in which direction they will ultimately move, and more research in this fast...

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  • Supporting roles in comparative legal history

    Law is a social science that is subject to mutation. Scholars devote efforts to reconstruct the events and the activities of actors behind those changes. These efforts are many times materialized in comparative legal historical studies that trigger new trends and lines of research. These efforts...

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  • Dissecting a legal source into seven pieces

    Monographs and law review articles are legal sources that can be better studied and understood by dissecting (Lat. dissecare) or “cutting” them into seven pieces. Looking carefully at those pieces–as when dissecting organisms in biological sciences–can help researchers to work with sources...

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  • Defoe, Covid-19, and resilience of law and society

    Historical novels offer a place to outreach for other legal systems, providing laboratories to study and understand law and society. There is especial value in revisiting historical novels that depict law and society, especially in these days of Covid-19. Such is the case of the novel by Daniel...

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