2026 VSR Annual Conference

Conference theme

The theme of the 2026 VSR Annual Conference is Crossing Borders: Navigating Law and Society in a World of Turbulence.  

This conference takes place amidst stormy conditions that challenge a variety of borders and boundaries. The world’s greatest powers openly disregard the border sovereignty of other nations. International institutions appear powerless in the face of ongoing genocides and find themselves under attack when they attempt to act. AI technologies develop rapidly and disruptively, driven in large part by influential Big Tech companies who reject safeguards and regularly foster antidemocratic sympathies. Global threats such as climate change seem to have fallen down the hierarchy of priorities. At the same time, migrant border crossing is presented as one of the gravest threats to rich Western societies and people with migration backgrounds are increasingly scapegoated as the root of diverse societal problems. Such narratives are used to justify harsh policy measures that challenge the boundaries of rule of law and human rights.  

Against this backdrop, a range of pressing questions emerges for scholars of law and society. Which implications do the current geopolitical dynamics have for the viability of international law? What role does legal mobilization play in addressing urgent problems that receive inadequate political attention? How do legal professionals and bureaucrats cope with laws and policies that are constitutionally or morally problematic? And particularly pressing is also the position of the judiciary, traditionally viewed as a last line of defense, which increasingly finds itself at the center of constitutional and political conflicts. We welcome applicants to engage these and other questions in their contributions to the conference.     

Keynote lecture

The keynote of the conference is titled Law’s Judgment, Racism’s Shadow: Reckoning with Ethnic Profiling at the Border, and will be delivered by Prof. Maartje van der Woude, Professor of Sociology of Law at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society, Leiden University, the Netherlands. 

Call for Abstracts and Proposals

The conference welcomes submission of both individual papers and full panels. Moreover, this year several panels have been pre-formed that invite submissions on their topics. The panels are listed below with their titles and organizers. When submitting an abstract of an individual paper via the designated link (see below) you will have the option to indicate a preferred panel for your submission. The primary language of the conference will be English and all communications will be in English. However, please note that submissions of papers and panels in Dutch are also warmly welcomed. For submitting an individual paper, we ask you to submit a title and an abstract (max 200 words). It is not compulsory to submit to a specific panel, individual papers can also be submitted independently. In all cases, the conference organizers decide on the final allocation of papers to specific panels. For full panel submissions, please provide the title of the panel session, the designated chair of the panel and at least three paper abstracts from participants.

The submission link for individual papers is here: Submission Form

For the submission of panels please mail to: vsr2026@law.eur.nl

The deadline for both individual paper and panel submissions is 24 November 2025.

You will be informed about your submission mid-December. 

Registration for the Conference  

Registration for the conference is through a portal run by Erasmus School of Law. The link for registration will open by the start of November 2025 and remain open till the start of the conference. The conference fee for regular attendants is € 110,- for both days, including coffee, tea and lunches and € 60,- for PhD researchers. 

Draft Programme [will be updated when papers are submitted] 

Pre-formed panels calling for individual paper proposals: 

• Law & Nature 

  Edwin Alblas & Niels Hoek

  Human-nature relationships, and conflicts between law and nature, are increasingly at the forefront of legal and societal debates, including in disputes over pesticides, nitrogen emissions, species protection, or habitat conservation. While much attention has been given to the interpretation and evolution of legal norms, the empirical realities of how biodiversity law is implemented, enforced, and contested often receive less sustained focus. Therefore, this session aims to bring together scholars who study how laws designed to protect nature operate in practice. 

    

  We invite contributions that examine, for example, how biodiversity protection rules are translated into administrative practice, how policymakers and regulators navigate the complexities around the implementation of legal frameworks, or how litigants and other parties shape the meaning of environmental obligations - be it through legal or political mobilisation. In the end, these empirical perspectives, whether based on case law analysis, socio-legal research, or otherwise, will help us understand (and discuss) the gap between legal norms on paper and subsequent outcomes on the ground. 

   

• Judiciary 

  Lyana Francot & Nina Holvast

  This session examines contemporary challenges and transformations within the judiciary by focusing on how courts and their professionals function in practice. We bring together empirical insights and legal perspectives to show how courts and court actors both shape and are shaped by social structures, political pressures, and technological change. For this session we invite empirical, comparative, and socio-legal theory–driven papers that examine all types of judiciaries. 

   

• Scholars crossing borders: Integrating legal and administrative insights on discretion and customisation in Street-level bureaucracy 

  Eline Linthorst & Lieke Oldenhof

  Are you a legal scholar exploring how discretion and customisation take shape in legal decision-making and interested in how public administration and social science can broaden your perspective? Or are you a public administration or social science scholar working with street-level bureaucracy theory and curious about what a legal lens can add? Then this panel is for you! 

   

  The Dutch Staatscommissie Rechtsstaat and the National Ombudsman show a growing distance between citizens and government. Citizens feel unheard and powerless in the face of complex rules, and feel that the rule of law is not always there for them. In some cases, it has even failed to protect them.  

   

  Street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) are seen as crucial to restoring trust. They are expected to apply laws in ways that do justice to citizens’ individual situations – the human dimension. However, SLBs operate in a layered institutional context – at the operational level (contact with citizens), the legal level (frameworks and boundaries) and the system level (organisational and administrative context) – in which public values sometimes conflict, especially in times of scarcity. 

   

  This interdisciplinary panel explores how legal and administrative approaches and methodologies can enrich each other in understanding this complex institutional landscape. We welcome contributions from different disciplines on: 

  SLB discretion in practice and translation of law into concrete decisions 

  • The impact of digitisation, organizational and financial frameworks and accountability structures on SLBs' ability to customise decisions to the needs of individual citizens
  • The role of SLB experience and expertise in shaping policy
  • Together, we want to work in this panel to develop a richer understanding of the role of SLBs, customisation and the rule of law in public service delivery. 

   

• Large Language Models in Law – Human Perspectives on AI-Assisted Justice 

  Elke Olthuis & Anna van Duin

  Large language models are rapidly entering legal practice, from contract review to AI-powered legal research assistants, to judicial decision support. Views on this development vary widely, from seeing it as a transformative opportunity to raising fundamental concerns about its role in justice. But how do these technologies affect the professionals who use them, and those who appear before them?  

   

  This panel invites empirical and interdisciplinary research exploring the human side of LLMs in law. We are particularly interested in studies examining: 

  • How lawyers and judges actually use (or resist) LLM tools in practice
  • Perceptions of fairness, legitimacy, and trust when AI assists legal analysis, reasoning, and decision-making
  • The changing nature of professional judgment and expertise
  • Ethical implications and professional responsibility in AI-assisted legal work
  • Citizen and litigant experiences with AI-mediated justice
  • Methodological innovations for studying AI impact on legal professions
  • Implications for legal education and training of future professionals 

   

  We welcome papers from law, sociology, psychology, Human-Computer Interaction, and related fields that go beyond technical capabilities to examine real-world implications, including how legal professionals, litigants, and citizens perceive and respond to AI integration in justice systems.  
   

• Compliance

  Malouke Kuiper & Nina Tobsch

  Why do people comply with rules, and why do they sometimes fail to do so? This panel examines compliance as the interaction between rules and behavior, aiming to contribute to our understanding of compliance as a multifaceted socio-legal phenomenon. Various disciplines focus on different mechanisms to explain rule abiding behavior; criminology, for example, studies the effects of punishment on people’s tendency to commit crimes, and explores how crime can be prevented using situational factors, whereas psychology focuses on individual differences in such behavior, and behavioral economics try to understand the how people weigh costs and benefits when deciding whether or not to follow the rules. Furthermore, (the study of) compliance is not limited to individuals alone; larger entities, such as organizations, also must adhere to certain rules and regulations. This panel integrates different perspectives on compliance to contribute to the understanding of this complex, multifaceted phenomenon.  

   

• Networks of Legal Mobilization and Countermobilization  

  Jeff Handmaker, Michal Stambulski & Sanne Taekema

  In constitutional democracies, making use of legal rights and procedures to advocate change is a cherished form of activism. Social movements and civic actors have successfully used legal mobilization, most visibly through strategic litigation in climate and non-discrimination cases. Increasingly, these mobilization efforts are being countered by actors with other political profiles and goals. In many cases, these actors directly target environmental and equal rights advocates, e.g. through SLAPP suits and legislative lobbies. 

   

  In this workshop, we investigate the landscape of legal mobilization by mapping which networks of actors are active in mobilizing for legal change and trying to understand how they relate to each other. We also discuss how we can distinguish legal mobilization efforts from countering actions of lawfare, relating mobilization studies to the rule of law. We invite papers that study specific legal mobilization movements and actions, and papers that investigate various progressive and conservative networks that connect different actors. We also invite papers that discuss analytical tools and frameworks to further articulate theories of legal mobilization. 

   

• Legal profession and legal education in turbulent times 

  Tamara Butter & Hedwig van Rossum

  The legal profession is under unprecedented pressure due to global crises, shifting societal expectations, and rapid technological change. This panel explores the place and responsibility of the legal profession as a whole and its individual members, including lawyers working in private practice, government lawyers and public prosecutors, in these turbulent times. It addresses questions such as: How do lawyers view and fulfil their in role in response to these pressures? How do lawyers uphold the rule of law when the systems that support it are strained? How do AI and technological developments affect legal work? And how can we educate lawyers for turmoil and change? Since legal education is responsible for preparing students for their future roles as legal professionals, it aims at their qualification, socialisation and subjectification. But how should those educational aims currently be understood and how can these be attained? We welcome papers related to any of these topics.  

   

• Regulation en enforcement

  Melanie Ehren & Paulien de Winter

  Maatschappelijke uitdagingen, zoals veiligheids- en leefbaarheidsvraagstukken, problemen in het onderwijs of de zorg, de energietransitie en de digitale infrastructuur, hebben met elkaar gemeen dat ze complex, verweven en contextafhankelijk zijn. Deze vraagstukken laten zich zelden vanuit één discipline, beleidssector of bestuursniveau oplossen. Vaak spelen bovendien tegenstrijdige belangen en uiteenlopende perspectieven een rol. 

   

  In deze sessie staat de vraag centraal wat deze toenemende maatschappelijke complexiteit betekent voor regulering en toezicht. Hoe kunnen rijksinspecties en andere toezichthoudende instanties omgaan met deze meervoudigheid? Moeten zij toewerken naar vormen van regulering waarin responsiviteit, flexibiliteit en lerend vermogen centraal staan, en waarin principes eerder op hoofdlijnen worden vastgesteld? En wat betekent dat voor de rol van toezicht en controle? Betekent dit dat toezichthouders op een andere manier moeten evalueren, controleren en interveniëren? Bijvoorbeeld door inspraak, samenspraak en kennisdeling te faciliteren? En hoe kunnen zij verbindingen leggen tussen onder toezichtstaanden, andere toezichthouders, netwerkpartners en maatschappelijke stakeholders om gezamenlijk bij te dragen aan het oplossen van maatschappelijke vraagstukken? 

   

  In deze sessie zoeken we bijdragen die reflecteren op deze veranderende rol van toezicht en regulering en hierbij reflecteren op de relatie tussen recht, instituties en maatschappelijke praktijken. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan onderzoek naar reflexieve governance, responsive regulation, risico-gebaseerd toezicht, zelfregulering en co-regulering, en de condities en dilemma’s waaronder dergelijke benaderingen kunnen werken in complexe maatschappelijke contexten. 

   

• Migration & law 

  Elise Maes & Ricky van Oers 

  Our current turbulent times are characterized by governments that are increasingly composed of or heavily influenced by parties with a strong anti-immigrant agenda. As a result, laws and policies are proposed and introduced with the official goal to ‘prevent migration’. Civil society organizations, academics and professional organizations have pointed at the legal obstacles that stand in the way of implementing such laws and policies, their inability to achieve the official aims, as well as their counter-productive effects in terms of, for instance, immigrant emancipation. In this panel, we welcome papers that address the issue of migration and law from a socio-legal perspective. Papers may address issues such as the effects of restrictive migration laws and policies, the way immigrants navigate these laws and policies, and how these laws and policies impact the practices of street-level bureaucrats.  

   

• Pop-up Law & Society Book Club: Philippe Sands, 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia 

  Jeff Handmaker & Willem-Jan Kortleven

  The Pop-up Law & Society (PuLS) Book Club is a newly invented tradition that is meant to recur every VSR conference. The PuLS Book Club will meet during one of the parallel sessions of the conference to discuss a book that is relevant to a law & society audience (this may be an academic monograph from a law & society discipline, but could also represent other genres, e.g. a history book, a journalistic study, or literary fiction). The Book Club has a dynamic membership policy: any conference attendee who has read the book or is interested in it is invited to join, without obligation to participate in future meetings of the Club.   

   

  The 2026 edition of the PuLS Book Club focuses on the latest book of the British-French writer and international law specialist Philippe Sands, titled 38 Londres Street: On Impunity, Pinochet in England and a Nazi in Patagonia (also translated in Dutch). The book explores the connections between Augusto Pinochet, who as president of Chile commissioned crimes against humanity and genocide, and Walther Rauff, a former Nazi SS officer responsible for the use of gas vans, who fled to Chile after World War II. The discussion will be led by Jeff Handmaker, associate professor at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague. Conference attendees who aspire to participate in this session are strongly encouraged to read the book in advance.