Teen sexting is an increasingly common phenomenon. It is doubtful whether primary teen sexting – when minors take sexually pictures of themselves and share these voluntarily with peers – should fall within the scope of the Dutch offence description of child pornography. The German Penal Code contains an exception clause for primary teen sexting, whilst the Dutch Penal Code does not. In this article is argued, through comparative law research, that the Netherlands should also adopt an exception clause. This way not only the right of the child to protection against sexual abuse and exploitation, but also the right of the child to sexual development is safeguarded sufficiently.

The Polish Supreme Court has held that a criterion of discrimination may also be a relationship of a social or familial nature that exists in the workplace and whose existence or absence on the part of the employee results in different treatment by the employer.

In two appeal cases considered jointly, the Court of Appeal (CA) has ruled that it is not direct or indirect sex discrimination, nor a breach of equal pay rights, to provide enhanced pay for maternity leave and statutory pay only for shared parental leave (SPL).

The author discusses the recent ECJ judgments in the cases Egenberger and IR on religious discrimination.

The decision pronounced by the first instance court related to the right of professional foster parents to request payment in lieu of untaken annual leave based on ECJ case law has been overruled by the Court of Appeal by making reference to a different ECJ ruling.

The liberal globalised order has brought increased focus on the regulation of international commerce, and especially dispute resolution. Enforcement of contracts has been a concern largely owing to the insufficiencies of the legal systems, especially relating to the institutional structure, and it holds true for India as well. The commercial courts mechanism – international and domestic – with innovative features aimed at providing expedited justice is witnessing much traction. India, similar to many other jurisdictions, legislated in favour of specialized dispute resolution mechanisms for commercial disputes that could help improve the procedures for enforcement of contracts. This research attempts to critique the comparable strengths and the reform spaces within the Indian legislation on commercial courts. It parses the status of commercial dispute resolution in India especially in the context of cross-border contracts and critiques India’s attempt to have specialised courts to address commercial dispute resolution.

In deze bijdrage staat General Comment No. 20 van het VN-Kinderrechtencomité, over het implementeren van kinderrechten tijdens de adolescentie, centraal. De aanleiding voor en inhoud van de General Comment worden in hoofdlijnen besproken. Daarnaast wordt specifiek aandacht besteed aan een onderwerp dat door het Kinderrechtencomité in het bijzonder van belang wordt geacht voor de bescherming van de rechten van adolescenten: het strafrecht. In dat kader wordt ook de positie van adolescenten in het Nederlandse straf(proces)recht behandeld.

Austrian courts have to deal with an increasing number of cases concerning dismissal on grounds of (alleged) discrimination. The particular challenge is to a draw a conclusive distinction between the concepts of disability and sickness.

According to the Labour Court of Mons, calculating the termination indemnity of a worker based on the reduced remuneration paid during a career break called ‘time-credit’ is compatible with EU law, despite the Meerts judgment regarding parental leave.

In 2016 the Dutch Government Commission of Reassessment of Parenthood (GCRP) proposed a wide array of legal changes to Family Law, e.g. with regard to legal multi-parenthood and legal multiple parental responsibility. Although the commission researched these matters thoroughly in its quest towards proposing new directions in the field of Family Law, multi-parents themselves were not interviewed by the commission. Therefore, this article aims to explore a possible gap between the social experiences of parents and the recommendations of the GCRP. Data was drawn from in depth-interviews with a sample of 25 parents in plus-two-parent constellations living in Belgium and the Netherlands. For the most part the social experiences of parents aligned with the ways in which the GCRP plans to legally accommodate the former. However, my data tentatively suggests that other (legal) recommendations of the GCRP need to be explored more in depth.
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In 2016 stelde de Nederlandse Staatscommissie Herijking ouderschap voor om een wettelijk kader te creëren voor meerouderschap en meeroudergezag. Ondanks de grondigheid van het gevoerde onderzoek ontbraken er gegevens omtrent de ervaringen van de meerouders zelf. Dit artikel levert een bijdrage in het vullen van deze leemte door inzage te geven in de (juridische) ervaringen van 25 ouders in meerouderschapsconstellaties in België en Nederland.

The central aim of this article is to analyse the manner in which the legal structure of EU citizenship subjectifies Union citizens. I begin by explicating Alexander Somek’s account of individualism as a concept which captures EU citizenship and propose to update his analysis by coining the notion of mobile individualism. By looking at a range of CJEU’s case law on EU citizenship through the lens of the purely internal rule and the transnational character of EU citizenship, I suggest that movement sits at the core of EU citizenship. In order to adequately capture this unique structure of citizenship, we need a concept of individualism which takes movement rather than depoliticisation as its central object of analysis. I propose that the notion of mobile individualism can best capture the subjectivity of a model EU citizen, a citizen who is a-political due to being mobile.

Vanaf 1 juni 2019 kan de Hoge Raad het EHRM in concrete zaken vragen om een (prejudicieel) advies uit te brengen. Wat betekent dit voor civiele zaken? Dit artikel biedt een overzicht. Aan de orde komen onder meer het adviesverzoek door de Hoge Raad, de procedure bij het EHRM en de procedure na advisering door het EHRM.

Wanneer een jeugdige te maken krijgt met jeugdreclassering, richt Jeugdbescherming Regio Amsterdam, verder te noemen Jeugdbescherming, zich bij de begeleiding van de jeugdige niet alleen op de jeugdige zelf, maar op het hele gezin. Conform de door Jeugdbescherming ontwikkelde methodiek, Intensief Systeemgericht Casemanagement, wordt het hele gezin betrokken. Deze methodiek wordt toegepast ongeacht het kader (het civielrechtelijke, strafrechtelijke of preventieve kader) waarbinnen Jeugdbescherming werkt. In tegenstelling tot in het civiele recht, lijkt de focus in de wet in het geval van het strafrecht echter vooral te zijn gericht op de individuele jeugdige verdachte of veroordeelde. In dit artikel wordt daarom onderzocht welke mogelijkheden de wet biedt om te werken volgens het Intensief Systeemgericht Casemanagement in het strafrechtelijke kader, tijdens de uitvoering van jeugdreclassering. Ook worden er aanknopingspunten in de doelstellingen van jeugdreclassering gezocht voor deze werkwijze.

In deze bijdrage staat de auteur stil bij General Comment No. 7, waarin het implementeren van kinderrechten in de vroege kinderjaren centraal staat. Allereerst wordt ingegaan op de vraag waarom het VN-Kinderrechtencomité het nodig achtte om dit General Comment op te stellen. Daarna ingezoomd op de aanbevelingen van het comité met betrekking tot het respect voor de mening van jonge kinderen, de ouderlijke verantwoordelijkheid en passende hulp aan ouders. De bijdrage wordt afgesloten met een nawoord waarin de kernboodschap van het comité wordt samengevat en de vraag wordt gesteld of deze boodschap nog steeds van belang is.

Previous research on intergenerational continuity of crime is primarily focused on transmission from fathers to children. In this article, we aim to give insight in the role of mothers in (the prevention of) continuity of organized crime. The results of our explorative study on 25 organized crime offenders based in Amsterdam and their partners and children, show that parenting skills and norms and values of mother seem to have an important role in both the intergenerational continuity of organized crime and the prevention of the transmission.

On the 25th and 26th October 2018, the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University hosted a conference on The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Practice: A Comparative Analysis of the Role of Courts. This article presents some of the key findings of the conference and summarises several of the speakers’ contributions to the conference.

A comparative legal research between Dutch and Belgian closed juvenile detention centres, focused on the internal legal status

This article examines the hearing of children in Belgian and Dutch courts in return proceedings following an international child abduction. The analysis is based on the experience, insights and needs of both children who have experienced an abduction by one of their parents, and family judges. In this sensitive and often highly conflicted family context, hearing children in court is not self-evident. Challenges of both a judicial-institutional and communicative-relational nature can hinder the effective implementation of children’s right to be heard. This contribution seeks to answer the question of how to better support judges and children in addressing these challenges, with the aim of enabling children to fully and effectively participate in return procedures. Building on the interviews with children and judges, supplemented with findings from Belgian and Dutch case law and international literature, three key recommendations are formulated: 1) explore and evaluate opportunities for judges and children to experience support during the return procedure, for example via the figure of the guardian ad litem; 2) invest in training and opportunities for specialisation of judges with a view to strengthen their expertise in taking the best interests of the child into account; and 3) systematically pay attention to feedback to the children involved on how the final decision about their return is made – and this before, during and after the procedure.
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Dit artikel bestudeert het horen van kinderen in Belgische en Nederlandse rechtbanken in terugkeerprocedures volgend op een internationale kinderontvoering. De analyse vertrekt vanuit de beleving, ervaring, inzichten, noden en behoeften van zowel kinderen als van bevoegde familierechters. In deze gevoelige en vaak uiterst conflictueuze gezinscontext is het horen van kinderen door de rechter geen evidentie. Uitdagingen van zowel juridisch-institutionele als communicatieve-relationele aard kunnen een effectieve implementatie van het recht van kinderen om gehoord te worden in de weg staan. Dit artikel zoekt een antwoord op de vraag hoe rechters en kinderen beter kunnen worden ondersteund om deze uitdagingen aan te pakken, met als doel dat kinderen volwaardig kunnen participeren in de terugkeerprocedure. Voortbouwend op de interviews met kinderen en rechters, aangevuld met bevindingen uit Belgische en Nederlandse rechtspraak en internationale literatuur, worden drie sleutelaanbevelingen geformuleerd: 1) voorzie mogelijkheden voor rechters en kinderen om spanningsvelden weg te werken tijdens de terugkeerprocedure, bijvoorbeeld via de ondersteunende figuur van de bijzonder curator; 2) investeer in opleiding en groeiende specialisatiemogelijkheden bij rechters en 3) heb aandacht voor feedback en terugkoppeling naar de betrokken kinderen over hoe de eindbeslissing over hun terugkeer tot stand komt, en dit zowel voor, tijdens als na de procedure.

In legal education, criticism is conceived as an academic activity. As lecturers, we expect from students more than just the expression of their opinion; they have to evaluate and criticize a certain practice, building on a sound argumentation and provide suggestions on how to improve this practice. Criticism not only entails a negative judgment but is also constructive since it aims at changing the current state of affairs that it rejects (for some reason or other). In this article, we want to show how we train critical writing in the legal skills course for first-year law students (Juridische vaardigheden) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. We start with a general characterization of the skill of critical writing on the basis of four questions: 1. Why should we train critical writing? 2. What does criticism mean in a legal context? 3. How to carry out legal criticism? and 4. How to derive recommendations from the criticism raised? Subsequently, we discuss, as an illustration to the last two questions, the Dutch Urgenda case, which gave rise to a lively debate in the Netherlands on the role of the judge. Finally, we show how we have applied our general understanding of critical writing to our legal skills course. We describe the didactic approach followed and our experiences with it.