Vereniging Voor De Sociaal-Wetenschappelijke Bestudering Van Hetrecht (Association for Socio-Legal Studies)

The Dutch and Flemish Vereniging voor de SociaalWetenschappelijke Bestudering van het Recht (Association for Socio-Legal Studies), founded in 1980, currently comprises about 150 members. It offers a platform for Dutch-speaking scholars—most of whom are from the Netherlands and Flanders—who are involved in or are interested in sociolegal studies. The main disciplines represented in the Association are sociology of law and legal anthropology, but among its members are also psychologists, lawyers, political scientists, and scholars of public administration.

Sociolegal studies already had a long history in the Netherlands before the Association was established. Legal anthropology thrived during the colonial era in the beginning of the twentieth century until the decolonization of Indonesia, when Dutch legal officials and scholars—under the zealous lead of Cornelis van Vollenhoven (1874–1933)—undertook ...