VUB Contextual Research in Law

  (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 .

  (image source:  Wikimedia Commons ) Due to ill health, we regretfully have to cancel the CORE Legal Theory Seminar with Prof. Lorraine Daston, foreseen for tomorrow at 12:00.

       (image source:  Wikimedia Commons ) Abstract: Rules shape nearly every aspect of our lives—from how we work and drive to how we greet each other and mark life’s milestones. We may resent some and crave others, but no culture can exist without them. To understand why rules matter, one must trace their history beyond their purely juridical ecology of production: from legal codes and cookbooks to military manuals and traffic regulations. Surprisingly, across centuries and contexts, their forms remain remarkably few. During this seminar, Lorraine Daston will explore the three enduring forms of rules—the algorithms that calculate, the laws that govern, and the models that teach. She will show how rules evolve, how they stiffen or soften, and how once-irritating regulations become daily habits. Far from being mere constraints, rules are also resources—tools that reveal as much about human imagination as they do about order. On the author: Lorraine Daston is one...

  (image source: Brill ) dr. Raphaël Cahen 's co-edited volume Relations internationales et droit(s)  (Paris: Pedone, 2024) was reviewed for the Journal of the History of International Law/Revue d'histoire du droit international  (Brill) by prof. Eliana Augusti (Salento). Read the advance article here: DOI  10.1163/15718050-bja10138 .

(image source: CHJ )   dr. Stefano Cattelan participates in the conference Territoire(s). Notion, limites, extensions , organised by the Centre d'Histoire Judiciaire  in Lille. More information here .

       (image source:  Wikimedia Commons ) Abstract: Rules shape nearly every aspect of our lives—from how we work and drive to how we greet each other and mark life’s milestones. We may resent some and crave others, but no culture can exist without them. To understand why rules matter, one must trace their history beyond their purely juridical ecology of production: from legal codes and cookbooks to military manuals and traffic regulations. Surprisingly, across centuries and contexts, their forms remain remarkably few. During this seminar, Lorraine Daston will explore the three enduring forms of rules—the algorithms that calculate, the laws that govern, and the models that teach. She will show how rules evolve, how they stiffen or soften, and how once-irritating regulations become daily habits. Far from being mere constraints, rules are also resources—tools that reveal as much about human imagination as they do about order. On the author: Lorraine Daston is one...

  The  EUTopia Connected Learning Community Legal History  is delighted to welcome Prof. dr.  Miloš Vec  (Universität Wien) for its annual opening lecture on Friday 14 November 2025. Within the framework of this year's theme The End of War, Prof. Vec will address the following topic: After 1919 and after 1945: How two World Wars shaped German Thinking on International Law More information on the EUTopia CoLeCo Legal History's  blog . 

  (image source: MPILHLT ) Prof.  Dave De ruysscher  presents tomorrow at the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt am Main. Abstract: For a long time, the history of commercial law in the later Middle Ages and early modern period was categorized in terms of a spontaneous emergence of norms (consuetudo mercatorum, lex mercatoria). Over the past decades, the influence of jurists and urban administrators has been emphasized more. However, what is lacking is an explanatory framework that captures the coming into being of rules relating to mercantile contracts and situations, as well as their canonization. The dichotomies of local versus transnational, customary versus official, mercantile versus juristic and merchant versus state fall short when the focus is on these problems. Challenges that impede with this exercise have to do with the relationship between law and the economy and the contribution of different social groups to the ...

  (image source:  Brill ) Abstract: Who owns the sea? This book explores this timeless question by tracing the development of claims over the sea from the late Middle Ages to the early modern era, shedding light on the complex interplay between legal arguments, political interests, and geostrategic realities. By the time Hugo Grotius’s Mare liberum (1609) famously championed the freedom of the seas, competing traditions of ‘claimed seas’ had already shaped European legal debates for centuries. Examining three macro-regions – the Mediterranean, the seas of Northern Europe, and the world oceans – this study challenges the dominant Grotius-centric narrative, offering a broader perspective on how political actors and jurists justified exclusive maritime rights long before John Selden’s Mare clausum (1635). While assessing the Eurocentric foundations of the modern law of the sea, it reveals how historical legal arguments and notions continue to shape contemporary ocean governance. ...

    The  EUTopia Connected Learning Community Legal History  is delighted to welcome Prof. dr.  Miloš Vec  (Universität Wien) for its annual opening lecture on Friday 14 November 2025. Within the framework of this year's theme The End of War, Prof. Vec will address the following topic: After 1919 and after 1945: How two World Wars shaped German Thinking on International Law More information on the EUTopia CoLeCo Legal History's  blog .