Law research scores 4.5 out of 5

The visitation committee Vanistendael is of the opinion that Leiden’s legal research is of good quality and the programmes offer many stimulating challenges. Director of Research, Wim Voermans: ‘This evaluation is even better than we had hoped. What also makes us strong is the breadth of our research. Exciting research environment Prof. Wim Voermans, director of the E.M. Meijers Institute, which is responsible for all the research of the Leiden Law Faculty, is very pleased with the positive image given by the visitation committee regarding Leiden's law research. Voermans: ‘Our faculty also received a visitation in 2000. That visitation related to the period 1995-2000, and the results were published in 2002. The evaluation of the Ten Cate committee, which carried out the visitation at the time, was a bit disappointing, especially because we had higher research ambitions. The criticism mainly pertained to the purported lack of cohesion of the research programmes. This is not particularly surprising since the faculty only began to organise its research into programmes in 1996. Prior to this time, research at our Faculty was predominantly individual. Now, more than ten years later, our programmes are clearly cohesive. I would go further and say that we have the feeling we are working in an exciting research environment. But does the outside world share this view? It was of great importance to us to have this conviction verified by a strong external committee. Good to excellent The legal research carried out at the E.M. Meijers Institute was given an average mark of 4.5 on a scale of 5. The Meijers Institute has six research programmes:

Constitutionalisation, Transnationalisation and the Coherence of Private Law Limits of Tax Sovereignty Dispute settlement Social Cohesion and the Law Security and law Securing the Rule of Law in a World of Multilevel Jurisdiction

What is it that makes the research so good? Voermans says that in addition to its appreciation of the internal cohesion of the programmes, the quality and the productivity, the committee was impressed by the fact that current social issues are central to each of the six research programmes. In drawing up the programmes, the faculty took as its departure point the available in-house expertise and clustered it into six research programmes with current and relevant research questions. In addition, the quality of Leiden legal research is not only the result of the quality of the individual researchers, but also of the breadth of the in-house expertise; this makes it possible to consider complex research questions from different perspectives and disciplines. This breadth of research also has a positive influence on the quality of legal education. The committee was also very positive about the functioning and the management of the Meijers Institute. Securing the Rule of Law The programme ‘Securing the Rule of Law in a World of Multilevel Jurisdiction’ was judged ‘excellent’ in its entirety, and scored a 5. The MLJ programme assumes that the law of individual countries no longer suffices in today’s world. Due to social and technological changes, legal problems arise which can only be solved by creating laws which surpass national states. This is true for various fields of law: international law, international economic traffic, the relation between individual states and the European Union and the fundamental rights and freedoms of individuals. Voermans explains: ‘In the last few years, new laws have been created in various international circles. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has been developing the fundamental rights for the inhabitants of the 47 member states, but the European Union itself has also been involved in the creation of law. All this new supranational legislation occasionally meets with resistance. The question which this raises is: how does the law respond to these developments? One cannot simply introduce a new law. National and international legal rules and principles set frameworks for and limitations to the possibility of creating international law. These frameworks and limitations are, in turn, subject to developments, for instance in the context of political discussions of the kind that has recently taken place in the Netherlands around the issue of the European ‘Constitution’. Research into these developments and the search for answers to these questions poses a tremendous challenge which will keep us busy for many years. This programme requires a vast breadth of expertise, which we are fortunate to have at our disposal within the Faculty. //Leiden University