The jury was impressed by the originality, breadth, normative ambition, and potential impact on future scholarship and public debate; and particularly the ability to build an argument on many different areas of law.

Two papers received an honorable mention: Niels Graaf’s article, ‘‘Solange’, ‘Fintantoché’, ‘Tant que’: On the Local Remodelling of a Canonical German Decision in French and Italian Constitutional Debates’, and Wiebe Hommes’s article, ‘In Search of an Independent Tribunal: Activating the European Court of Human Rights, 1969–1974’.

The award

The jury consisted of Kanad Bagchi, Nuna Zekić and Giacomo Tagiuri. They presented the award to Hadassa Noorda and presented two honorable mentions during the Summer Drinks. Every year, the prize is handed out for the best publication by a young researcher in the faculty between 1 January and 31 December. Hadassa received an official award document and 1000 euros for research as the winner.

The jury is impressed by the originality, breadth, normative ambition, and potential impact on future scholarship and public debate of the article. The article advances our analytical understanding of workplace monitoring practices, sheds new light on the legal doctrines through which such practices are assessed, and opens up new ways of thinking about the legal and ethical implications of workplace surveillance in the digital age.  What particularly impressed the jury was the article’s ability to draw productively on different areas of law in order to build its argument’, including theories and doctrines from labour law, data protection law, human rights law, tort law, and criminal law.

Hadassa is Associate Professor at the Amsterdam Law School and a fellow of the Amsterdam Center for Criminal Justice (ACCJ). She is currently in the course of publishing Digitally Monitored: Freedom, Surveillance and the Law (Hart Publishing, 2026), a volume co-edited with Jeevan Hariharan that examines digital monitoring across a range of contexts and establishes it as a distinct field of enquiry, with a particular focus on its implications for privacy, liberty and fundamental rights. She was delighted to receive  the award, which highlights the significance of her work in this field.

'Building on my philosophical concept of exprisonment, which I developed in previous work, we look at employee monitoring from a different angle: beyond informational privacy, it can significantly restrict employees’ liberty, making it appropriate to understand such practices as a form of imprisonment and prompting a rethinking of how the law should address them.'

Hadassa’s paper 'Imprisoned at Work: The Impact of Employee Monitoring on Physical Privacy and Individual Liberty ' was published in the Modern Law Review, 88 (2025), p. 333-365.

Evaluation and selection

The evaluation and selection were based on the following criteria:

• scientific originality and contribution
• thoroughness and cross-border nature

This year, the Amsterdam Law School received 6 entries, covering 6 faculty sections. The jury found all 6 submissions to be very high quality – in terms of academic quality and societal relevance. ‘Choosing just one paper was, as always, extremely difficult, not least because of the variety of topics, methods, and scholarly traditions represented. All of the papers were refined, rigorous, and thoughtfully argued; several displayed remarkable originality. Although all submissions were of exceptional quality, three papers stood out in particular because of their thematic originality, methodological innovation, and analytical depth.

That is why, in addition to the main prize, there are 2 honorable mentions this year:

Niels Graaf’s article, ‘Solange’, ‘Fintantoché’, ‘Tant que’: On the Local Remodelling of a Canonical German Decision in French and Italian Constitutional Debates, in: Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht / Heidelberg Journal of International Law. ‘The paper offers an elegant and original account of how constitutional ideas travel across legal systems and adds a valuable contribution to our understanding of the circulation of legal ideas within Europe.’ 

Wiebe Hommes’s article, In Search of an Independent Tribunal: Activating the European Court of Human Rights, 1969–1974’, in: European Law Open. ‘This paper reads like a gripping historical narrative, which is high praise for legal scholarship; and combines impressive empirical depth with a compelling reinterpretation of a pivotal moment in the history of European human rights law.’