Research master

For whom is this master program?

The program is designed for motivated students with high grades from all legal bachelor programs; for students who like to increase their knowledge of (a subdiscipline of) law and to develop their skills to work independently as a researcher in an international context, in small groups together with other students. It offers students the exquisite possibility te be closely involved with scientific research undertaken by one of the departments or the research institute Centre for Law, Administration and Society.

What can be achieved with this program?

The program prepares for the Doctor in Law Program (PhD) and for positions at other legal research institutions (WODC, Asser insitute, legal evaluation research). You are being trained to become a specialist in one ore more subdisciplines of law and you are able to write a doctoral dissertation in these disciplines or independently conduct research.

In combination with a Bachelor in Law degree (LL.B), the program will be equipped to supply for “civiel effect”, that means that after graduation you have the formal background to be able to act as a judge, attorney or notary. This way an intrinsic deepening on master level into part of the law is possible.

What does the program look like?

The program consists of two components: profile subjects and optional subjects (these are the domain subjects for specialization).

The following subjects are part of the profile subjects: Theme subjects (Procedural Justice, Law and the Regulatory State, Shared Legal Orders), Method subjects (Skills, Epistemology, Comparative Law, Legal Reasoning, Evaluation Research), Research subjects (the individual graduation thesis, Evaluation Research conducted in groups) and Context subjects (Regulation, Legal Philosophy, Interdisciplinary approaches to law, European Legal Development, Law-making in the European Union, Law and Economics).

The Domain subjects are optional subjects. A domain subjects offers a deepening into a specific subdiscipline of law (for example Tax Law, Notarial Law, International/European Law, Administrative Law, Law and ICT or Dutch Law).

An important difference with the other Master programs, is the fact that the Research Master Program comprises two years where the others are one-year programs. During these two years we can offer you a research assistant position.

For more information

Unfortunately we can’t grant foreign students to our Research Master at the moment because not all courses are given in English. For international students we organize the LLM-masters at our University.