Nick Huls is Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Law, working at the Van Vollenhoven Institute.

Nick Huls (Gouda, the Netherlands, June 22, 1949) is also emeritus Professor of Socio-legal Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam and  Leiden University.

He graduated from Utrecht Law School in 1973. Consequently he became a PhD-student working on his dissertation (1973 – 1977).

From 1977 – 1982 Nick Huls worked at a Legal Aid Bureau, first in Eindhoven (by way of alternative military service) and after that in Amsterdam.

Soon after the defense of his dissertation entitled Consumer Credit Law and Protection, in 1981, Nick Huls became a civil servant (1982 –1989). After a short period at the Ministry of Finance he became Project Leader at the Ministry of Economic Affairs, where he was responsible for the policy for the new Dutch Consumer Credit Act, which became effective in 1992.

In 1986 Huls was commissioned by the Dutch government to study the American bankruptcy law for consumers. On the basis of his Report, a new Chapter for consumers was added to the Dutch Bankruptcy Law in 1998.    

From 1988 to 1990 Huls worked as a part time ‘mentor’ for the Council for legal cooperation with Indonesia. His main task was acting as a tutor/supervisor for Indonesian law teachers writing a dissertation, partly in the Netherlands. He also gave many lectures in Indonesia in the field of company law, legal aid, consumer credit and bankruptcy.

In 1991 Nick Huls returned full time to Academia. He became Director of the Leiden Institute for Law and Public Policy and became a researcher himself. He wrote a book about his experiences as a legal draftsman and became interested in legislative studies. Furthermore he was attracted to legal theory and socio-legal studies.

In 1992 he was commissioned by the European Commission to study and to make policy recommendations in the field of consumer over indebtedness and bankruptcy.

In 1996 Nick Huls became Professor of Law and Technology at Delft University of Technology, where he taught introductory courses in many fields of the law.

In 1997 he was appointed part time (0.2) Professor of Socio-legal Studies at Leiden University, and from September 2000 as full time Professor of Socio-legal Studies at Erasmus School of Law Rotterdam, which he combined with the Leiden Chair.

In 2008 he was a visiting scholar at The Center for Law and Society at the University of California at Berkeley, USA.

For the period May 2011 - May 2013 the Rwandese Cabinet appointed him as the Vice Rector Academic Affairs at the Institute of Legal Practice and Development (ILPD), Nyanza, Rwanda, an institute of higher learning for legal professionals (judges, prosecutors and advocates). In December 2013 he returned to the Netherlands.

On November 5, 2013 he was appointed as a visiting professor at the Law Faculty of the University of Pretoria.

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