The Citizen in European Private Law: Norm-Setting, Enforcement and Choice

In numerous fields of law, ranging from family law to company law, private actors increasingly set their own rules, revert to private enforcement of those rules and choose the applicable law.

Jan Smits holds the Chair of European Private Law at Maastricht University and is the academic director of the Maastricht European Private Law Institute (MEPLI). After his study of law at the universities of Leiden and Poitiers (1986-1991), he defended his PhD at the University of Leiden (1995), developing a theory of how contractual liability can be best explained. In 1995 and 1996 he taught at the universities of Stellenbosch and Tilburg. He then was appointed at Maastricht University, first (1996-1999) as an associate professor and then (1999) to the newly created Chair of European Private Law (the first chair for this field worldwide). At Maastricht, Jan led the private law research group of the Ius Commune Research School. From 2008 to 2010, he was distinguished professor of European Private Law and Comparative Law at Tilburg University, a post he gave up in late 2010 to return to Maastricht and found the Maastricht European Private Law Institute. He held visiting positions at a number of foreign institutions, including Tulane Law School, Leuven University, the University of Liège, Louisiana State University, the Penn State Dickinson School of Law and the University of Helsinki. From 2010-2012, he held the HiiL Visiting Chair on the Internationalisation of Law and in 2013-2014 the TPR Visiting Chair at the University of Ghent. Jan Smits is an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).