Research of the Law Group
Law is a powerful tool for social change. The Law Group studies the influence of law on the rules and institutions needed to face the environmental, social and economic challenges of today and to facilitate transitions to a sustainable living environment.
Through its unique institutional position at Wageningen University & Research, the Law Group can act as a bridge between traditional legal scholarship and researchers working towards practical life science solutions to global challenges. Any successful scientific solution to these challenges needs to be accommodated within our legal systems, and be in line with the normative principles that these systems represent.
By holding an unique institutional position, the Law Group can act as a bridge between traditional legal scholarship and researchers working towards practical life science solutions to global challenges. Any successful scientific solution to these challenges needs to be accommodated within our legal systems, and be in line with the normative principles that these systems represent.
Our research lines
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Environment
One of the most important regulatory challenges of our time is how to manage the wide range of the public and private actors and actions that shape our social and natural environments. Doing so successfully requires an in-depth understanding of multiple connected, but at times contradictory, legal frameworks which have to balance a number of public and private interests of current, and future, generations across the globe.
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Food Systems
Our food system has to accommodate a wide range of policy goals: to be sustainable and just; to ensure food and nutrition security; to deliver safe and healthy food; to safeguard the wellbeing of non-human animals that are part of our diet and/or affected by our agricultural system more broadly; to become increasingly circular; to incorporate technological and digital innovation; to remain, and/or become, economically viable; and to respect the limits of our living environment. Law plays a crucial role in achieving these goals and in managing the trade-offs and synergies between them.
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Business and Human Rights
Corporations have significant power and influence over our living environment. They can both contribute to and prevent the realisation of human rights, the Sustainable Development Goals, and a circular and climate-neutral economy. National, EU and international legal frameworks seek to maintain economic growth while regulating corporate activities in the face of global political contestation and technological innovations.
Chair plan Law Group
The Group’s chair plan for the period 2021-2025 is called Law for the Living Environment. As part of the chair plan, the group’s research, teaching and social impact focuses on three thematic research lines: Environment, Food Systems, and Business & Human Rights.
Connectors
Our research lines interact in important ways and our researchers collaborate across these lines, as is reflected in our three connecting themes.
Our connectors
- Systemic change
- Transnational law
- Transdisciplinary methodology