Leiden Hosts Third ICON-S Benelux Conference on Trust in Transition

Over two days, 203 participants met for three plenaries, 42 panels with 170 papers in four rounds of parallel sessions, four Skills Labs and a Young ICON-S Welcome and Community Moment for early-career researchers. They ranged from PhD researchers to senior scholars, judges and practitioners.

A theme close to home

The conference started from the idea that trust lies at the heart of public law. It shapes the relationship between citizens and the state and underpins the legitimacy of legal institutions, and it runs in both directions, since governments must also place trust in their citizens. Yet amid rapid technological change, pressing environmental challenges and shifting institutional landscapes, that trust is being tested. The conference asked how public law can build, maintain or restore it, across four sub-themes: technological transformation, sustainability transitions, trust in and between institutions, and trust, truth and evidence.

For Leiden, the theme of trust was a natural fit. In her welcome, Dean Suzan Stoter recalled that William of Orange founded the university in 1575 as 'a firm stronghold for the whole country'. A university earns that kind of trust through independent research, she noted, and its motto, Praesidium Libertatis, depends on academic freedom.

Trust in institutions is in fact one of the Law School's four interdisciplinary research focus areas, and each of the other three also found a place in the programme. Technology, law and justice met the sub-theme on technological transformation, and sustainability and law the one on sustainability transitions. Law and empirical research supplied the methods behind the sub-theme on trust, truth and evidence, and several panels were convened by colleagues working in these areas.

Three plenaries: from diagnosis to reconstruction

The plenaries were designed as conversations rather than individual keynote lectures. Speakers responded to each other and to the floor, and disagreement was welcome. Together, the three sessions moved from diagnosis to transformation to reconstruction.

Diagnosis. The opening plenary, moderated by Tarlach McGonagle, asked whether trust is a legal concept at all. Janneke Gerards, Ria Mortier and Stéphane Pisani brought perspectives from institutions central to the rule of law and democracy: the Dutch Council of State, the Belgian Court of Cassation and the European Court of Human Rights. Gerards tied trust to basic human needs for predictability and fairness, and called for criticism of institutions that remains constructive.

Transformation. In the second plenary, moderated by Anne Meuwese, Balázs Bodó, Delphine Misonne and Reijer Passchier turned to technology and sustainability. Here the conversation shifted from trust to its opposites. Distrust, whether of powerful private actors or of science, proved at least as interesting as trust. Bodó's suggestion that public law may need a framework of organised distrust stayed with many in the room.

Reconstruction. In the closing plenary, moderated by Herwig Hofmann, Céline Romainville, Ingrid Leijten and Jerfi Uzman turned to rights. The discussion moved between political theory and constitutional law, and kept returning to one question: how much can we expect from courts when trust needs rebuilding?

42 panels, one recurring question

The panels showed how far the theme reaches. Judicial independence and appointments came up in several sessions, as did the role of courts in disqualifying candidates and annulling elections. Legal mobilisation ran through many panels as a way for citizens to hold institutions to account. Other panels dealt with AI regulation, migration and citizenship, and climate and environmental issues.

Other panels took the theme into less obvious territory, from the legitimacy of the European Central Bank and the future of the EU budget to criminal justice and public procurement. Many were proposed as complete panels through the call for papers, while others were assembled from individual paper submissions. Speakers came from across the Benelux and well beyond, and together they presented 170 papers.

In many rooms the same question returned: whom can we trust to know, when expertise is scientific, algorithmic or judicial?

New this year: Skills Labs

The Skills Labs were new to this edition. They offered something different from the usual panels: a space to learn skills relevant to academic work and to discuss the challenges and dilemmas researchers face, whatever their area of specialisation. Speakers talked openly about applying for grants (Catalina Goanta, Vasiliki Kosta and João Pedro Quintais), using AI in legal research (Damien Charlotin), publishing books (Fleur Praal and Erna Sattler) and getting started with empirical legal research (Jessie Pool). Each lab combined short opening contributions with open discussion and ran twice on the first afternoon, so participants could attend two. The rooms were full, and the discussions carried on into the coffee breaks.

For early-career researchers, the Skills Labs were particularly valuable, and the conference also gave them a moment of their own. It opened with the Young ICON-S Welcome and Community Moment, hosted by Sophie Bols and Aritz Castro Landazuri, which introduced the Young Scholars Research Forum and the opportunities open to early-career researchers in the ICON-S Benelux community.

Hard questions, and some hope

After two intense days, the conference closed with hard questions, but also with some hope. If public law is willing to look beyond its own disciplinary boundaries and beyond a court-centred idea of rights, it can help channel trust in a time of multiple crises.

The organisers, Luísa Pinto e Netto and Melanie Fink, look back on a successful edition. They thank the ICON-S Benelux Chapter, Leiden Law School and its research department, whose funding made the conference possible, the Leiden Law Academy, the student volunteers and everyone who took part.