Formally trained in philosophy and law, Van Domselaar started her professional career at a law firm specialized in migration law. In 2014 she defended Ph.D. thesis The Fragility of Rightness. Adjudication and the Primacy of Practice at the Amsterdam Law School, in which she developed a virtue-ethical approach to adjudication. In 2015 she won the departmental prize for best article of the year with her article Moral Quality in Adjudication: On Judicial Virtues and Civic Friendship.

Research

Van Domselaar 's research focuses on the question how to account for ethics in legal practice. She especially addresses this question in relation to the classic legal institutions and legal roles relevant for securing values of political morality and the rule of law. Drawing on neo-Aristotelian and neo-Wittgensteinian strands within practical and legal philosophy and on social-empirical research, she seeks to come to grips with ethics as ‘lived experience’ on the part of legal professionals and of citizens who are involved in legal procedures.

Van Domselaar has published extensively on topics such as tragic dilemmas in legal practice, judicial virtues, the ethics of corporate lawyering, courage of legal professionals, civic friendship and moral perception in legal practice. In the Netherlands, she has stirred the public and professional debate on the professional responsibility of corporate lawyers. She is a frequently invited speaker in legal practice.

Legal ethics track

Van Domselaar has developed and coordinates a legal ethics track that is part Amsterdam Law Practice, an experiential learning programme for Master's students of the Amsterdam Law School. She is also responsible for the professional development track in the Bachelors of Law, which includes the course The Legal Professions and Legal Ethics.

ACLPA

Van Domselaar is founding director of the Amsterdam Center on the Legal Professions and Access to Justice (ACLPA), board member of the International Association of Legal Ethics and editor-in-chief of the Netherlands Journal for Legal Philosophy. Currently, she collaborates in the nation-wide interdisciplinary consortium The Algorithmic Society (ALGOSOC).