Maria Refors Legge

Short presentation

I am a Senior Lecturer in Public Law, specialising in education law, human rights law and legislative theory. Since beginning my doctoral studies in 2015, I have worked extensively with education law across all levels of the system – from early childhood education and compulsory schooling to university governance. I completed my PhD in 2021 with a dissertation on schools’ legal obligations to prevent degrading treatment of pupils.

Keywords

• Education law; Children’s rights law; Human rights law; Academic freedom; Institutional autonomy; Freedom of expression; Legislative theory; Juridification; Administrative law; National security law; Disinformation and influence operations.

Biography

I hold a PhD in public law and am currently a senior lecturer in administrative law at Uppsala University. Since beginning my doctoral studies at Stockholm University in 2015, I have devoted the majority of my research to education law in a broad sense – spanning preschool, compulsory school, and higher education. My interest in the legal and institutional structures that shape the education sector has followed me throughout my academic career, and in 2021 I defended a doctoral thesis examining schools’ legal duty to prevent degrading treatment of pupils.

As a university teacher, I have taught widely across public law, children’s rights, school law, administrative law, international law and human rights law. I have also served as a visiting researcher at the University of Vaasa, where I taught both EU law and children’s rights, with a specific emphasis on the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

I am active in several academic networks, including the Institute for Education Law, the European Association for Education Law and Policy (ELA), Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society (CRS), the Nordic Network of Children’s Rights Researchers and The Stockholm Centre for the Rights of the Child (BRC). In collaboration with international colleagues, I am involved in ongoing and forthcoming comparative studies on academic freedom and the legal and governance structures that support it.

In my scholarly work, I strive to combine doctrinal legal analysis with a critical and normative understanding of law’s role in education and democratic knowledge institutions. Whether analysing schools’ legal responsibilities, university autonomy, or the state’s duty to secure institutional resilience in sensitive areas of research, I work from the conviction that the formulation and application of law must be effective, legally sound, and societally meaningful.

Research

My research lies at the intersection of education law, human rights law, and legislative theory, with a particular focus on how rights and duties are constructed, interpreted, and implemented in practice. I have a strong analytical interest in juridification, governance, and the actual function of legislation – not only as formal legal norms, but also as steering instruments, symbolic frameworks, and political tools. This includes analysing how educational law is shaped by rights discourse, professional ethics, and institutional design.

Alongside my work in education law, I have conducted research on national security law at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, where I was employed from 2022 to 2024. During this period, I focused on issues including disinformation, influence operations targeting elections, legal vulnerabilities, and the risks associated with foreign investments in the Swedish welfare sector, with particular attention to healthcare and education. This work has deepened my understanding of how legal structures are affected by geopolitical dynamics, and of the legal and organisational strategies needed to safeguard sensitive activities and fields of research.

Media

I engage with the media as an expert commentator in education law and national security law. Across public broadcasting and professional platforms such as SVT, Dagens Nyheter, and Vi Lärare, I have analysed institutional duties of schools, teachers’ legal boundaries for using force, real-world implications of discrimination law, and legal resilience within the education sector. These appearances reflect my broader research agenda of unpacking how law functions – effectively or symbolically – in democratic knowledge institutions, and how strong institutional safeguards, rather than rhetoric alone, determine the practical conditions of education.

The Involuntary School Lawyer (Profile)

https://www.lararen.se/nyheter/portratt/den-ofrivilliga-juristen

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-refors-legge-5238899b/

Maria Refors Legge: The School & the Law

https://poddtoppen.se/podcast/1732963703/sa-funkar-skolan/s01-e032-skolan-juridiken