Bio Nik de Boer

Nik de Boer is a PhD researcher at ACELG. He works on a dissertation about the democratic legitimacy of judicial resistance by national constitutional courts to European integration. The project is supervised by Prof. Deirdre Curtin and Prof. Leonard Besselink. A key question of his research is whether judicial review of EU law by national constitutional courts contributes to the democratic legitimacy of the EU. As part of his research Nik worked as an intern at the European Court of Justice in February and March 2013. In the fall of 2014 Nik spent a semester as a Visiting Researcher at Harvard Law School.

Nik joined ACELG in June 2012 as a junior researcher working on the issue of secrecy and democracy for Prof. Deirdre Curtin. He holds an LLM degree in Legal Research from Utrecht University (cum laude). For his Master Thesis Constitutional Identity, Fundamental Rights and the Issue of Divergent Rights Standards in the EU  he received the Prize for Best Master Thesis of Utrecht University in 2012, as well as the Max van der Stoel Human Rights Award. Prior to finishing his LLM, Nik obtained a bachelor in law and a bachelor in philosophy from Utrecht University (both cum laude). During his bachelor studies Nik spent a year at King's College, University of Cambridge, where he studied jurisprudence and comparative law. During his studies he also was an editor of the Dutch law journal Ars Aequi, and worked as a student-assistant at Utrecht University's Institute for Legal Theory. In addition, he was an intern at the Permanent Mission of the Netherlands to the United Nations in New York for six months in 2010.

Research Interests

• EU Constitutional Law
• Fundamental Rights
• Comparative Constitutional Law
• Democratic and Constitutional Theory

Teaching

• Europees Recht I (LL.B)

• Europees Recht II (LL.B)

• No ancillary activities