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During the opening of the 2025 academic year, research director of the Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ School of Law, François Kristen presented the G.J. Wiarda Prize to Cristiana Santos, for a study she co-authored on consent banners on commercial and non-commercial websites and apps. According to the jury, this interdisciplinary article "addresses a topic everyone encounters almost daily, but many of us often do not really evaluate what we are consenting to – we just click the buttons." 

Cristiana Santos,  Assistant Professor in Law and Technology at Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ, conducted the study together with , Research Director in computer science at Inria (The French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology) and , Associate Professor in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana, USA. As a team, they received a prestigious price, earlier this year, t CNIL is a French independent oversight authority on information technology and liberties. In Utrecht, the jury did not take this French award into account when selecting this paper for the G.J. Wiarda Prize. It was selected on its merits. 

The study, ", published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, identifies mismatches between regulatory guidelines and user studies on website consent banners (such as cookie banners).  Cristiana Santos: "Data brokers build profiles, based on our online browsing history, purchase behavior, and app usage. They sell this to companies, for example to banks or insurance companies. The decision you make by accepting or declining cookie preferences can have a big impact. People often do not realise what they’re agreeing to, when clicking 'yes'."

Data brokers build profiles, based on our online behaviour. People often do not realise what they’re agreeing to, when clicking 'yes'

Dark patterns

The Jury of the G.J. Wiarda Prize writes: "The article demonstrates clearly that this legal framework leaves much discretion to designers of websites and apps. As a consequence, there is room for manipulative tactics, which are known as dark patterns. User studies show that these dark patterns influence user’s choices, our choices." 

Transdisciplinary study

The jury praised the transdisciplinary methodology of the study, combining knowledge and insights from computer science, data protection law and design. "The transdisciplinary methodology is substantially explained, and it is explained how Cristiana as a legal scholar collaborated with Nataliia Bielova as a computer scientist and Colin M. Gray as a researcher in design. Multiple figures and tables are used to visually present the methodology, types of banners, the user studies, design parameters and so on."

"The well-structured article presents the results of the analyses of the guidelines, the identified eleven gaps and five insights. It concludes with actionable recommendations for regulators and the authors are in favor of a further development of consent interface standardization. Thus, no two worlds apart, but bringing two worlds together!" 

About the G.J. Wiarda Prize

The G.J. Wiarda Prize is established by the board and the research council of the Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ School of Law to praise outstanding scientific publications. There is an award for senior researchers and, since 2025 also a  G.J. Wiarda Research Talent Prize, which was awarded to Hylke Jellema for his paper ‘Perpetrator knowledge: a Bayesian account’, Law, Probability and Risk, 2024, 23, p. 1-21. The awards are named after Professor Gerard Wiarda, who was Professor of Administrative Law at the School of Law at Utrecht Univeristy between 1947 and 1950 and subsequently became member and then President of the Dutch Supreme Court. 

The jury

The jury consisted of representatives of different research groups at the School of Law

• on behalf of the Montaigne Centre, Katharine Fortin
• on behalf of RENFORCE, Cedric Ryngaert
• on behalf of UCALL, Emanuel van Dongen
• on behalf of UCERF, Joost Huijer
• on behalf of UCWOSL, Chris Backes.

Chair of the jury was François Kristen, research director.