The Ius Commune Prize (est. 2001) is awarded annually to an early career researcher or a doctoral student who wrote an original article of outstanding quality on the area of the Ius Commune Research School, which is to examine the foundations of European legal systems to identify their common legal rules (ius commune). The Ius Commune Research School is a cooperation between the law schools of the Universiteit Maastricht, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, the Universiteit Utrecht and the Universiteit van Amsterdam. The associate partners of the Ius Commune Research School are VU University Amsterdam, University of Liège, University of Stellenbosch, and University of Edinburgh.