We at ACMRL are really happy to announce that Professor Lieneke Slingenberg has been awarded the prestigious Vidi grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) to support her innovative research on legislative power of governance in migration law

Lieneke’s research project, titled ‘Executive supremacy? Executive lawmaking in migration law’, addresses a fundamental question: Is the executive’s legislative power in migration law sufficiently constrained to prevent arbitrariness?

Migrants are predominantly governed by legislation created by the executive, instead of by the legislature. Many core rules are laid down in administrative decrees or ministerial regulations, that are made without the involvement of parliament. While executive legislation is common in administrative law, this project hypothesizes that in the particular context of migration law, characterized by the state’s all-encompassing sovereign power over migrants’ lives, executive legislation is insufficiently constrained.

Through empirical legal analysis, this project will map the scope of executive lawmaking in Dutch and EU migration law, as well as the constraints on the executive’s legislative power. Additionally, based on a combination of legal-doctrinal, theoretical, comparative and historical analysis, we will analyse whether these constraints are sufficient from the perspective of the rule of law.

The project is expected not only to advance theoretical understanding of executive lawmaking, but also to provide a framework for strengthening the rule of law, with potential applications to other areas of administrative law.

At ACMRL, we’re incredibly proud of Lieneke’s achievements and honoured to support her.