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Research Kooijmans Institute for Law and Governance

The Kooijmans Institute for Law and Governance is the faculty’s research institute and hosts eight research programmes. The Institute is named after Peter Kooijmans (1933 – 2013), who studied at VU University and who was awarded his doctorate at VU where he subsequently obtained a chair in international law He was later appointed as Full Professor at the University of Leiden, Minister of Foreign Affairs, a judge at the International Court of Justice and Minister of State.

The name ‘Kooijmans Institute’ is not only a tribute to this remarkable lawyer, it also guides our mission and focus. Peter Kooijmans dedicated his life to issues of international peace and security and was conscious of the relationship between law, politics, and morality, with the ethical and moral components of international and national legal issues forming an important theme of research. In that tradition, the Kooijmans Institute approaches legal issues from an international, transnational and meta-legal perspective. The Institute operates on the cutting edge of law, ethics and (international) politics with a focus on those regulatory measures which transcend traditional borders of public and private law.

The Kooijmans Institute is also an explication of Governance in Society, one of the four research themes of VU university. Prof. dr. E.R. Kleemans is director of the Institute.