VUB Contextual Research in Law

  The Royal Commission for the Publication of Old Laws and Ordinances  launches its brand-new blog today. Prof. De ruysscher and Prof. Dhondt (president) are members of this organ, instated by Royal Decree in April 1846 by King Leopold I of the Belgians.  Student-researchers Max Van den Bosch and Senne De Kerpel redacted biographical notes on two top jurists who served as the Commission's presidents: Matthieu Leclercq (1796-1889) and Charles Faider (1811-1893) . The blog will regularily communicate on the commission's members and on its past (digital) publications, besides announcing new volumes.

 (source: CORE-channel, Youtube ) The recording of Monday's presentation of the transcript of Léon Arendt's Droit des gens  (law of nations)-course within the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1904) is now online on our Youtube-channel. The transcript can be consulted, copied, downloaded... for free in open access on OSF (DOI  10.17605/OSF.IO/E7HXS ).

  (image source: Belgian State Archives, all rights reserved) This event is a presentation of 175 pages of  manuscript course notes on the law of nations  ( Le droit des gens ) linked to a  course taught at the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Belle Époque , retrieved in Louis (Léon) Arendt's private papers in the Belgian State Archives (Fund BE-A0510.320). The inventory can be consulted on the State Archives'  website . Edouard Louis Léon Marie Arendt (1843-1924) was the director-general of political affairs (1886) in the Belgian Foreign Office in the heyday of King Leopold II's reign. He entered the Ministry as 'attaché' in 1870. Belgium's security on the European continent, and of course the affairs of the Congo Free State were the dominant themes of his time in office as a civil servant (1870-1912). Biographical details can be found in the entry by Jacques Willequet in the  Biographie nationale de Belgique . His father,  Academy memb...