Dissertation
Critique of Administrative Law: Constitutional Culture, Democracy, and Legal Protection in a Comparative Legal Perspective
On 23 June 2026, Joyce Esser defended the thesis 'Critique of Administrative Law: Constitutional Culture, Democracy, and Legal Protection in a Comparative Legal Perspective'. The doctoral research was supervised by Ymre Schuurmans and Ingrid Leijten.
- Author
- Joyce Esser
- Date
- 23 June 2026
- Links
- Critique of Administrative Law: Constitutional Culture, Democracy, and Legal Protection in a Comparative Legal Perspective
Dutch administrative law is changing rapidly at the moment. Alongside the typical image of the judge 'who isn’t supposed to sit in the seat of the legislator or the administration,' concepts like customization and proportionality are coming into play. But how do you change a system that’s deeply shaped by historical roots and persistent ideas, which often remain implicit in the ‘modest’ Dutch constitutional order?
This book develops a method of comparative law, answering the question of how national systems of public law can be understood, evaluated, and improved. The focus is on the concept of constitutional culture: the way in which the seemingly universal ideas of constitutional democracy take shape in the concrete constitutional and administrative world.
The book takes the reader through the key historical moments of administrative (procedure) law in the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States, showing how 'technical' rules about access and review are shaped by ideas of democratic legitimacy and legal protection. Implicit assumptions of the Dutch system are thus exposed and critically assessed. Based on this comparative law approach, the book contributes to the academic debate about the future of administrative law in the Netherlands and offers concrete recommendations for Dutch administrative procedural law.