Chantal Mak’s research regards the impact of fundamental rights, originating from national constitutions and international human rights treaties, in European and national private law. A key question concerns the extent to which private parties should take into account the public interest. On the basis of legal-philosophical and legal-theoretical insights, Mak investigates how European rules on contracts and liability relate to the laws of EU member states. The role of judges in the development of European private law is of special interest to her.

Mak has been affiliated to the UvA since 2001, and to the UvA’s Centre for the Study of European Contract Law since 2006. She is the director of the Amsterdam Research Institute for Legal Studies.  Mak furthermore spent longer teaching and research stays at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Pisa), the European University Institute (Florence), Paris-II/Assas (Paris) and the Center for Transnational Legal Studies (London). In 2014 she was awarded a Vidi grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for the research project ‘Judges in Utopia: The New Constructive Approach to the Social Justice Debate in European Private Law.’