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About HiiL

The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law (HiiL)
is an international research institute that studies the challenges globalisation poses to legal systems, in particular at the national level.

Fundamental research for practical solutions | HiiL joins the best thinkers from top-level universities with practitioners in bottom-up knowledge partnerships to generate real solutions for the challenges of the law of the future.

Flexible and global | HiiL is a networked organisation with a small in-house staff and over 140 HiiL Fellows from around the world working on its projects.

Our Philosophy

Through fundamental reflection by the best scholars worldwide, HiiL strives to develop innovative and practical answers for professionals struggling with the challenges that globalisation poses to law and governance in the 21 st century. We strongly believe that research should provide value for money. That is why we focus on the most challenging questions of our time.

Our Research

HiiL’s research pursues innovation in five themes, which together provide a coherent perspective on the challenges globalisation poses to legal systems. In each of these themes, HiiL research addresses issues highly relevant to our contemporary internationalised and multi-layered environment.

Our Research Themes

  • Rule of Law: How is rule of law promoted by states, international organisations, and private actors, and what can be done to make their efforts more effective?  
  • Private Actors: What is the role of private actors in transnational rule making and how is this effecting national legal systems and the core requirements of rule of law which they are designed to embody and uphold?  
  • Highest Courts: To which extent is the increasing interaction between the national and international level affecting the role of highest national courts?  
  • Transnational Constitutionality: How can to core constitutional principles be maintained in respect of decision making which takes place in a transnational environment between international law and national law?  
  • Criminal Process and International Crime: How to create common rules of international criminal process for adjudicating crimes with transnational impact?

Our Unique Approach

  • We identify relevant research topics through an ongoing dialogue with politicians, professionals and academics.
  • We conduct our research in ‘multi-university’, multi-national, multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional project teams, which we build and support.
  • We translate our applied research into practical knowledge products that contribute towards solving real problems.
  • We use the resulting feedback from the field to improve our research and test the results against our core question: How does globalisation affect legal systems, in particular national legal systems, and how do and/or should legal systems react to globalisation?

HiiL at a Glance:

  • Researchers: 142
  • Visiting Chairs & Fellows: 8
  • Research projects: 11
  • Publications: 93
  • Citations: 78
  • Events: 77

More about HiiL

HiiL was founded in 2005. Back then there was a firm belief in the urgent need for new international, multi-disciplinary research regarding the consequences  of globalisation for legal systems. Please read more about us and our work in HiiL Achievements and Aspirations 2005-2010.