Center for Transboundary Legal Development

The Center for Transboundary Legal Development at Tilburg University in the Netherlands is home to over 70 researchers. The research of the centre is structured and organised through a major research programme: ‘Beyond State-Centric Law and Legal doctrine: New Actors and New Determinants’, which builds on an earlier thematic focus, the ‘Permeability of Legal Systems’ (2000-2004). The programme focuses on the realities of the post-Cold War situation in which international and European law find themselves at the centre of a new search for ‘comprehensive security’, for more democratic and society-based decision making structures, and for, amongst many other things, globalisation and Europeanisation with a human face, i.e. globalisation characterised by intensification of world-wide economic co-operation, by an open eye for the negative consequences of the free market and by respect for fundamental values. This, focally, involves the recognition that the system of the nation-state and its exclusive competences, as well as the international and European system that was built on its foundations during the 20th century, are gradually being challenged, complemented and partly replaced by new approaches and systems. A key theme, therefore, engaging the centre’s researchers, is the exploration of a human rights-centred international legal normativity and its practical implications.

Contact: Professor Jonathan Verschuuren, University of Tilburg: J.M.Verschuuren@uvt.nl