Itai Siegel

Itai Siegel is a PhD student at the Department of Jurisprudence at Leiden University. His research concerns the influence of conspiracy theories on Dutch liberal democracy, with a specific focus on the emergence of Dutch sovereign citizens and their interpretation of Dutch law. Within the context of his doctoral research, Itai has written articles on conspiracy theories and democracy, sovereign citizen argumentation before Dutch courts, and the criminalisation of disinformation. Itai makes use of empirical as well as normative legal research methods, incorporating sociolegal research methods with legal-theoretical analyses. His empirical work includes courtroom observations of cases involving sovereign citizen argumentation and interviews with public servants coming across conspiratorial rhetoric in their work. His more normatively oriented work concerns post-truth discourse within liberal democracy, layperson interpretations of (Dutch) law, and the hermeneutical-phenomenological philosophy of Paul Ricoeur.