Lodewijk Smeehuijzen holds a master in law from the University of Amsterdam (1996). He practiced law for five years at De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek and Houthoff Buruma (1996 – 2001), concentrating on litigation and commercial contracts. In 2008 he defended his Ph.D. thesis (cum laude) on limitation of actions. He currently is professor of private law at the VU law faculty and honorary judge in the Court of Appeal Arnhem-Leeuwarden. In 2016 he received the Frank van der Duijn Schouten award for best senior teacher of the VU-University. He is annotator of the leading journal on Dutch Supreme Court cases - de Nederlandse Jurisprudentie.
Lodewijk initiated a series of Master programmes over the years, the most recent being International Business Law: Climate Change and Corporations. He is also director of Ondernemingsrecht aan de Zuidas. He teaches Contract Law, Tort Law, Law of Obligations, Law & Governance, Climate Change Liability and Law and Circularity.
In his teaching he aims to take the law out of the books and demonstrate its real-life implications. He does this by involving students in his empirical research, by closely cooperating with legal practice (guest lectures at law firms, banks, regulators, NGO's) and by involving disciplines such as economics and psychology.
Lodewijk writes in the areas of contract law, tort law, climate litigation, corporate law, civil procedure and legal theory. About half his work is based on classical legal research methods, focusing on doctrinal issues. The other half is law-in-action oriented, inspired by empirical research and mostly in collaboration with others.
