Are liberal democracies in decline? If they are, what role does populism play in this? What can and should democracies do to defend their core features against ‘democratic decay’? And which features can be considered essential? These are difficult questions further complicated by the realisation that their answers depend on perspective. Populism and democratic decay are global phenomena but they play out differently in different countries and regions. They also cannot be properly understo...

The book is the extended version of the inaugural lecture given by Professor Petra Bárd on 21 September 2023 on the occasion of her taking up the Chair in Sustainable Rule of Law at the Research Centre for State and Law (SteR) in the Faculty of Law at Radboud University, Nijmegen.

Professor Bárd places the specific manifestation of rule of law deficiencies in the evolution of European criminal justice within a broader constitutional context. She has led the way in reframing the academic and...

Proportionality analysis describes a particular legal technique of resolving conflicts between human or constitutional rights and public interests through a process of balancing. As a general tendency, the current vivid academic debate on proportionality pays, however, insufficient attention to the institutional context – the question of judicial review. Based on the premise that proportionality analysis is a permissible approach to resolve conflicts between rights and other interests, the ...

This book is the extended version of the inaugural lecture given by Professor Jasper Krommendijk on 19 June 2024 at Radboud University. Professor Krommendijk delves into the current state and effectiveness of human rights laws. Amid growing skepticism and critical debate, human rights norms are often perceived as under threat—questioned by politicians, academics, and the public alike. This lecture dissects the intricate layers of legal doctrines and empirical evidence, pushing forward the u...

This book provides a selection of interesting papers presented at the Third REALaw Research Forum, which was held in Utrecht on January 30, 2015. The overarching theme of the colloquium was Judicial Coherence in the European Union.

Ever since the establishment of the EU's judicial system, coherence in the administration of justice within the EU has been an intriguing topic for debate amongst legal scholars and practitioners. Throughout the development of EU (administrative) law in recent decad...