The section Civil Law provides education and research in the field of civil law.

Civil Law is a specialisation of the master’s programme Rechtsgeleerdheid (Law) at the renowned Leiden Law School of Leiden University.

The Department of Civil Law is responsible for education and research in the field of civil law. We teach the master’s degree programme Civiel Recht (Civil Law LL.M.), attracting many students each year from Leiden and elsewhere.

How and why governments engage with civil society as well as how civil society organizes itself and exerts political influence constitute the key focus of the research programme Public Governance & Civil Society. As such, this research programme offers unique expertise within the field of public administration…

The section Civil Procedure Law offers education in the bachelor and master fase of the Law program.

Recently, Ingrid Leijten’s book Core Socio-Economic Rights and the European Court of Human Rights was published with Cambridge University Press. The monograph was published in the series Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy (edited by Laurence Gormley and Jo Shaw) and deals with the protection…

The States, Markets, and Civil Society department of the Institute of Public Administration examines how politics and governance, businesses, citizens, and societal organisations collaborate to address major societal challenges. This includes issues such as inequality, migration, and sustainability.

The MA Classics and Ancient Civilizations at Leiden University covers the entire range of present-day research on the civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Syria and Palestine, Greece and the Roman Empire. In chronological terms, the program covers thousands of years, from the early origins…

This project aims to provide evidence-based knowledge on the conditions for successful anti-corruption activism in Ukraine.

Why do some civil wars experience quagmire, a situation in which belligerents are trapped in fighting? To explain this puzzle, Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) analyses the overlapping strategic interactions between foreign powers and the warring parties. Studying…

The Classics and Ancient Civilizations (Research) master's at Leiden University covers the entire range of present-day research on the civilisations of Greece and Rome, Egypt and the Ancient Near East.

Are you thinking about studying the Advanced LL.M. Civil and Commercial Law? Learn more and watch the videos.

Why do communities form militias to defend themselves against violence during civil war? Using original interviews with former combatants and civilians and archival material from extensive fieldwork in Mozambique, Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden University Institute of Political Science) explains the timing,…

On 18 April, Alexandre Tavadian defended the thesis 'The International Civil Service: Redefining Its Independence'. The doctoral research was supervised by Niels Blokker and Brian McGarry.

'The Routledge Handbook of Civil and Uncivil Society in Southeast Asia' explores the nature and implications of civil society across the region, engaging systematically with both theoretical approaches and empirical nuance for a systematic, comparative, and informative approach.

Leiden University’s Master of International Civil and Commercial Law (L.L.M.) examines the interrelated layers of hard law, soft law, and relevant case law.

Conference

On 17 December 2018, Dejian Kong defended his thesis 'Civil Liability for Damage caused by Global Navigation Satellite System'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. dr. P.M.J. Mendes de Leon.

Are you thinking about studying Classics and Ancient Civilizations? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Political scientist Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden University) about the organisation of rebel and government auxiliaries in the civil war in Mozambique (1976–1992).

This is the 2017 paperback release of William Michael Schmidli's The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere, which won the 2013 Foreign Affairs Magazine Best Book of the Year.

Miriam Cohen defended her PhD dissertation entitled “Reparations for International Crimes and the development of a Civil Dimension of International Criminal Justice” on 28 June 2017. She wrote her thesis under the supervision of Professor L.J. van den Herik and Professor C. Stahn.

In Freedom on the Offensive, William Michael Schmidli illuminates how the Reagan administration's embrace of democracy promotion was a defining development in US foreign relations in the late twentieth century.

The Leiden Children’s Rights Clinic is a pilot initiative that advances the implementation of children's rights and offers research-based, legal and practical solutions to address the gap in knowledge and shortage of resources in the field of children’s rights.

This book examines the impact of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on national and international jurisprudence, since its adoption in 1989.

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the magna carta of civil aviation, the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention 1944), Professor Steven Truxal has written a leading piece for the European Civil Aviation Conference: The Chicago system: a steadfast legal blueprint for…

Melanie Fink, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Europa Institute of Leiden University, has published her book Frontex and Human Rights, Responsibility in 'Multi-Actor Situations' under the ECHR and EU Public Liability Law. This work is based on her doctoral dissertation, which she defended in December…

This project aims to explore, in general, what explains civil servants’ attitudes and behavior, and, in particular, why some civil servants are more committed to professional norms and public service values – such as impartiality, equity, efficiency, and innovation – than others.

The Research Handbook on Labour, Business and Human Rights Law edited by prof. Janice Bellace of the University of Pennsylvania and ass. prof. Beryl ter Haar of Leiden University. The book is publisehd in Edward Elgars series on Human Rights.

On 1 October 2019 the Hazelhoff Centre for Financial law hosted its 19th guest lecture starring Paul Sharma, managing director at Alvarez & Marsal and co-head of the European Financial Industry Regulatory Advisory Services practices.

This article discusses the degree of independence that is required for national human rights institutions to function successfully.

Do citizens care for interest representation? A study on citizens’ perceptions and feelings towards the representative potential of civil society

The central question in this book is whether there is a human right to family unification.

On 30 May, Gert Jan Boeve defended the thesis 'The general right of suspension'. The doctoral research was supervised by Bart Krans and Alex Geert Castermans.

Vanessa Mak is appointed Professor of Civil Law at Leiden University as of 1 October 2020. She will succeed Professor Jac. Hijma who is retiring.

A civil servant employed by the municipality of The Hague was cause for discussion after taking part in an Extinction Rebellion protest. Only under additional conditions could the employee in question stay on at the municipality. She decided to resign. According to Barend Barentsen, Professor of Labour…

A new Special Issue with Transnational Legal Theory edited by Jelena Belic, Matthew Canfield, Henning Lahmann, Rachel Griffin, and Barrie Sander, brings together a collective of perspectives to unpack the promise and perils of human rights as a vocabulary for governing digital platforms.

On Thursday 15 December, Elisavet Alexiadou has defended her doctoral thesis ‘The Right to Health. A Human Rights Perspective with a Case Study on Greece.’ at the Academy Building of Leiden University. Supervisor was Prof.dr. A.C. Hendriks.

This book explores the reception of foreign news during the late sixteenth-century civil wars in France and the Netherlands.

This thesis aims at thinking through the ethical position of animals in a way that differs radically from the manner in which this ethical position is thought within contemporary animal rights discourse.

In this article, Maria-Elena Kisyova, Yannick Veilleux-Lepage and Vanessa Newby shed some light on how a small but highly visible group of influencers are actively working to promote a dangerous far-right ideology.