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HBO/WO

MBO

April 8, 2026

Legal Network Analysis

How can complex legal systems, filled with interconnected cases, statutes, and actors, be understood through data? Legal Network Analysis offers law students and researchers a practical guide to mapping and interpreting relationships in legal data using the tools of network science. Building on the foundations of graph theory, this open textbook shows how relationships between cases, statutes, or states can reveal underlying structures in law that traditional methods often overlook. Whether analysing citation networks, treaties among nations, or the diffusion of legal norms, readers learn to translate legal questions into visual and quantitative insights. Developed by the Law and Tech Lab at Maastricht University, this resource combines conceptual clarity with applied learning. Each chapter blends concise explanations with interactive Jupyter notebooks, allowing readers to reproduce, modify, and experiment with examples in real time. Appendices include step-by-step guidance for data preparation, visualisation, and software setup; making the book equally accessible for newcomers and advanced students. Designed to support the Network Analysis course at Maastricht University, this textbook is also a valuable standalone introduction for anyone exploring the data-driven dimensions of law and policy.

Open (Access) Text Book

Gustavo Arosemena, Gijs van Dijck, Roland Moerland

March 26, 2018

Changing legal landscape

The legal practice is changing. Negotiation skills become more important for the legal professionals. It is about changing from ''me against you' to a playfield where both parties are aiming for the best possible outcome.

Video

Linda Reijerkerk

October 19, 2021

CE02Bx - Legal Structures

Explanation of the different legal structures that can be chosen and what criteria can be used to choose the best structure

Video

edumedia@wur.nl

July 8, 2022

The socio-legal lab

The Socio-Legal Lab: An Experiential Approach to Research on Law in Action is an interactive workbook for socio-legal research projects. It employs the idea of a “lab” as a space for interactive and experiential learning. As an introductory book, it addresses researchers of all levels who are beginning to explore interdisciplinary research on law and are looking for guidance on how to do so. Likewise, the book can be used by teachers and peer groups to experiment with teaching and thinking about law in action through lab-based learning. The workbook is designed to accompany and inspire researchers on their way through a socio-legal research project. It thus covers themes and questions that may arise in the research process, ranging from socio-legal theory to methods and academic communication. While working through this content in an interactive manner, our aim is to empower the reader into thinking more creatively about their methods, while at the same time demistifying them.

Open (Access) Text Book

Siddharth Peter de Souza, Lisa Hahn

2023

Critical Thinking in Legal Education (article & toolkit) - by Bart van Klink

Critical thinking is generally considered to be one of the central goals – if not the ultimate goal – of education. Critical thinking, as part of liberal learning, is done primarily for its own sake, for the sheer pleasure of thinking against the grain, exploring new ideas and thereby contributing to the development of scientific knowledge. The liberal conception of critical thinking is under threat, since education is nowadays turned into some form of social engagement. Increasingly, academic education is conceived in instrumental terms as a means to achieve some non-academic end: to create responsible ‘academic citizens’, who are committed to the values of diversity and inclusion and who are engaged in solving contemporary social problems. Against this tendency, this article defends a liberal conception of critical thinking in academic legal education and addresses three questions: (i) what is critical thinking? (ii) why do we need critical thinking? and (iii) how can we, as teachers, promote critical thinking in our students? Finally, it raises the question of whether a liberal conception of critical thinking rules out any kind of social engagement as pursued by universities in the present day.

Document

B.M.J. van Klink

January 25, 2023

Law, Imagination and Poetry: Using Poetry as a Means of Learning.

As a lecturer in legal theory, I often hear the complaint from students that reflexive law courses are rather vague (by which students mean abstract). They find it difficult to grasp the theoretical literature. At the same time, many students do acknowledge that in these courses they are ‘allowed to think’ and ‘allowed to have an opinion’. It is up to us as lecturers to show that these courses are relevant and to coach students to deal with the level of abstraction. To tackle the ‘double problem’ of vagueness and irrelevance, I conducted an experiment, inspired by James Boyd White, in which students were asked to report on a philosophical text by means of a poem, in which they had to project the essence of the text unto contemporary (world) politics. The experiment had a dual goal: I sought to challenge students to read a philosophical text differently with the aim of challenging students to think about the text differently, more critically, and analyse its relevance to contemporary problems in (world) politics and law, to discover their own position – their sovereign voice. In this publication you can find the poetry exercise and a link to the article.

Document

Bald de Vries

August 23, 2023

Lecture: Overview of Ethical, Professional and legal Aspects of HCAI applications

To rational and discuss the topics related to legal aspects of HCAI applications

Website

HCAIM Consortium

July 1, 2025

KU 014: 3D model of Neo-Babylonian clay tablet

This publication contains a replica of a historical clay tablet of the special collections of the VU University Library. The original tablet is a Neo-Babylonian legal document from the archive of the Rē'i-alpi family in Borsippa. The Achaemenid capital, Susa, is mentioned. Period: Neo-Babylonian (c. 7th-6th centuries BCE). Date: Darius I 18. Provenance: Borsippa. Language: Akkadian. Personal names: Rēmūt-Nabû son of Nabû-mukīn-zēri of the Rē’i-alpi family, Bazuzu, [x]-Nabû/Mušēzib-Marduk / Ilšu-abūšu, Nabû-zēru-ukīn / Nabû-ahhē-šullim / Mallāhu, Nabû-šumu-uṣur / Šarrahu, Nabû- uṣuršu, Bēl-iddin / Ibnāya, Nabû-bullissu / Lâbâši-Marduk / Illi-bani. Material: clay. Dimensions: 4,3 x 5,6 x 1,5 cm. Weight: 41,26 g.

Printable object

Linde Voorend, Kim Dibbets

October 20, 2023

The dual challenge from AI and cognitive science

This lecture offers a theoretical framework for analysing the ways in which insights about human and artificial cognition challenge existing legal (reasoning) practices. It briefly touches on possible pathways to address these challenges as well. The lecture is part of project RECOGNISE. RECOGNISE aims at developing an interdisciplinary training curriculum on legal reasoning and cognitive science, filling a gap in legal higher education. It is a strategic partnership of six European universities for higher education sponsored by the ERASMUS+ Programme. The project will provide the interested learners (legal researchers, law students, legal practitioners, and beyond) with introductory and advanced materials on topics including heuristics and biases in adjudication, cognitive structure of legal concepts, and defeasible reasoning in law. Materials will be provided in the form of an online handbook, video lectures, summer schools, and other online and on-campus activities.

Website

Antonia Waltermann

October 20, 2023

Acts and Responsibility of AI

This lecture considers the relevance of the cognitive sciences for law when it comes to acts and responsibility (or liability) of artificially intelligent agents. It addresses whether we (1) can, and (2) should hold AI liable. The lecture is part of project RECOGNISE. RECOGNISE aims at developing an interdisciplinary training curriculum on legal reasoning and cognitive science, filling a gap in legal higher education. It is a strategic partnership of six European universities for higher education sponsored by the ERASMUS+ Programme. The project will provide the interested learners (legal researchers, law students, legal practitioners, and beyond) with introductory and advanced materials on topics including heuristics and biases in adjudication, cognitive structure of legal concepts, and defeasible reasoning in law. Materials will be provided in the form of an online handbook, video lectures, summer schools, and other online and on-campus activities.

Website

Antonia Waltermann