"There is no gap between Is and Ought, but there is a gap between fact and norm."

"There is a difference between legal powers and legal competences, but there are no power-conferring rules."

"There is no obligation to comply with contracts."

"There are no regulative rules, and all rules are constitutive."

All these claims are controversial in the eyes of many legal theorists. This book argues that they are all true, or justified, if understood in the proper context. The argument starts from t...

Tax authorities face the challenge of influencing tax compliance by behaving in such a way that taxpayers perceive to be treated fairly and thus comply voluntarily with tax rules. In order to meet this challenge it is crucial that institutions such as tax authorities frequently interact with taxpayers and selectively apply instruments so that a sustainable basis of trust in taxation is created. At the same time, tax authorities need to have the capacity to adjust to a rapidly changing technol...

For some years now, certain EU Member States have been promoting their national courts as the best places to litigate cross-border commercial disputes. This has led to a competition between jurisdictions, which recently has been re-energised by the upcoming withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the EU. This civil justice competition affects, among other things, governments' policies, court organisation, and cross-border litigation strategies.

Building on an interdisciplinary methodology, this...

The governing contract law dictates and regulates the life of a contract. Despite its importance, little is known about the choice of law decision-making process. Is there (ir)rationality involved? How can we ascertain this? How can we improve these judgements?

Rethinking Choice of Law in Cross-Border Sales is an innovative, multi-disciplinary, and practice-oriented initiative to examine what factors determine the way contracting parties choose the law to govern their agreements. It presents ...

In contemporary, late-modern society, security landscapes are being re-sketched. Various traditional and new security providers are part of this evolving scene. The military and the police, who are thought of as 'the old boys in town', are meeting once again. As central components in the power structure of any state, they are heavily involved in this new security design, generating both latent and obvious blurring of boundaries.

The aim of this book is to further explore the blurring boundarie...

In recent decades all sorts of illicit medicines have been increasingly traded world-wide: from antibiotics to weight loss drugs, and antimalarial tablets to steroids. The illicit medicines market is generally associated with considerable health risks for its users, as well as with high revenues and a perceived growing degree of criminal organization. It is therefore important to gain extensive criminological insights into this global market. This book provides indepth and empirically-grounde...

In his valedictory lecture, The Roundabouts of European Law and Economics, Prof. Dr Roger Van den Bergh critically reflects upon three decades of research in European Law and Economics. He discusses the difficult reception of economic analysis of law in the 1980s-1990s, the spectacular growth of Law and Economics in both academia and policy circles at the turn of the millennium and the recent impact of behavioural economics on policy-making. Examples from different areas of law illustrate maj...