VUB Contextual Research in Law

  (image source: oldbelgianlaw ) Our former voluntary associate dr. Brecht Deseure published a precious volume in 2020, containing drafts and proposals for the Belgian Constitution of 1831 with the Royal Commission for the Publication of Old Laws and Ordinances of Belgium. This work is now available in open access. More information here .

  (image source: Bloomsbury ) Dr. Raphaël Cahen contributed a chapter on "Joseph Marie Portalis (1778–1858) as Advocate of Constitutional Monarchism". On the volume: This two-volume study sees contributors from the UK, the USA, Canada, Mexico, Singapore and ten countries from across mainland Europe analyse how monarchy has been theorized and implemented in the Atlantic world from the birth of conservatism during the French Revolution to the present day. Using monarchy as a lens, it also provides an original exploration of how conservatism, often branded as reactive, can be viewed as a continual response to, and reinterpretation of, pivotal social and political events over the longue durée. The Making of Modern Atlantic Monarchies shows that 1789, the Bourbons' return, the 1848 revolutions, the US Civil War, World War I, the rise and fall of fascism and other events became catalysts that triggered conservative thought and waves of traditionalist renovations - often posing...

(image source: Brill ) First paragraph: La seconde monographie d’Isaac Nakhimovsky, professeur associé au département d’histoire à Yale, était très attendue. Il faut rappeler que sa thèse de doctorat effectuée à l’Université de Harvard (2008) avait été publié en 2011 sous le titre The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte. Cette étude d’histoire de la pensée politique s’inscrivait dans les pas de l’école de Cambridge où Nakhimovsky séjourna pendant six années en tant que Research Fellow (2008-2014). Read more here: 10.1163/15718050-bja10140 .  

  (image source: ESCLH Blog ) drs. Antoine Leclère , drs. Rodrick Van der Smissen and Prof. Frederik Dhondt will present at the Belgisch-Nederlandse Rechtshistorische Dagen  (Nijmegen, 27-28 November 2025). More information here .

  (image source: Polity ) Prof. Laurent De Sutter's Superfaible has been translated to English by Roberg Hughes and is available with Polity Books (Cambridge). Abstract: We have become superheroes. Nothing can resist us anymore: not persons, ideas, facts, realities, or beings. We owe our superhuman strength to a tool we have taken up that submits everything to the scrutiny of our judgment: critique. After its first formulation at the end of the sixteenth century, the project of critique spread from one sphere to another until it became almost universal: we have all of us been transformed by our equal capacity to judge, approve, and reject. If modernity is defined as the journey we have taken to move away from the myths and dogmas of the past, then critique, with its emphasis on reason and the autonomy of judgment, has been the lynchpin of modernity.Today, however, the critical project shows signs of exhaustion. We are beginning to realize that being right is useless, now that every...

  (image source: allevents.in ) More information here .