Rowie Stolk is a PhD candidate at the Constitutional and Administrative Law Department of Leiden Law School. The provisional title of her research is ‘We Are the World: The changing role on interest groups in the legal system’, and it concerns the question how the practice of public interest litigation by interest groups can be assessed in terms of legitimacy and effectiveness, and to what extent Dutch procedural law should facilitate it. Rowie also lectures in the courses Law on Administrative Procedures (BA3) and Law on Administrative Procedures (Ma).

More information about Rowie Stolk

Research

Provisional title: ‘We Are the World: The changing role on interest groups in the legal system’

In her PhD research Rowie studies how the practice of public interest litigation by interest groups can be assessed in terms of legitimacy and effectiveness, and to what extent Dutch procedural law should facilitate it. To this end, Rowie studies the possibilities and obstacles within the Dutch legal system for strategic litigation by interest groups and the assumptions underlying this legal design. She also studies how these assumptions relate to the international debate on the legitimacy and effectiveness of public interest litigation by interest groups. Furthermore, she provides insight in the extent to which interest groups within the current Dutch legal design attempt to litigate in the public interest and how they deal with and assess the effectiveness of the Dutch legal system in practice. Finally, the question is raised whether and to what extent Dutch procedural law should facilitate public interest litigation by interest groups.

Teaching

Rowie is practical coordinator of and teaches in the bachelor course Law on Administrative Procedures. She also lectures in the master course Law on Administrative Procedures.

Background

Rowie studied Law and obtained her master degree in Dutch Constitutional and Administrative Law from Leiden University (2016; with distinction). During her bachelor studies she successfully completed the Honours College Law track of Leiden University. She also received her bachelor degree in Political Science from Leiden University (2014; with distinction). Next to her studies, Rowie was a research assistant at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law. She also worked as a paralegal at the Amsterdam law firm De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek and as an intern at the The Hague law firm Van der Feltz.

In September 2016, Rowie started as a Research and Teaching Staff Member at the Department of Constitutional and Administrative Law, Leiden Law School. Next to working on her research proposal, she teached in the bachelor courses Principles of Constitutional Law and Introduction to Administrative Law and was practical coordinator of the bachelor course Law on Administrative Procedures.