17/03/2026
Join us tomorrow!
The Maastricht Centre for Law & Jurisprudence cordially invites you to a colloquium with Damiano Canale (Bocconi University) on 'When Experts Make the Law'.
Canale will present a paper in which he examines a form of expert deference in legal decision-making that gives rise to what I call “the opacity of law.” An authoritative legal text is opaque when it incorporates technical terms or expressions that are not fully understood by either the legislators who enact the text or the judges who is called upon to apply its content. In such cases, epistemic deference shifts into semantic deference: experts effectively determine the content of authoritative legal texts and, in that sense, make new law. I argue that opacity undermines the legitimacy of statutory law in constitutional democracies and hampers judicial reasoning. Drawing on a case-law example, the article traces the sources of opacity and assesses its pernicious effects.
Date: Wednesday, 18 March 2026
Time: 16:00-18:00h
Venue: Faculty of Law, Bouillonstraat 1-3 Maastricht, room B1.019 (bestuurskamer) and via Teams
If you want to join, either in person or via Teams, please register here:
All events are hybrid. In case you can attend physically, the location is Maastricht University, Faculty of Law. The room will be communicated a few days before each seminar. If you attend the colloquia online, you will receive the Teams link a few days before each seminar.
