This article collects publications in this journal about the emergence and effects of legislation. It covers the developments and results of research of the last four decades. First it is concluded that there has been considerable attention to the subject. Second a clear broadening and (theoretical) deepening from different perspectives can be observed. Social-legal research of legislation also appears to have specific characteristics. Subsequently, various points of attention are pointed out, such as more attention to the relationship between legal characteristics and effects, more variation in research methods and more systematic theory-driven research. Finally, attention is drawn to the relationship between (the working of) legislation and social transformations such as globalization, digitization and the increasing and profound influence of social media in society.

The Environment and Planning Act (EPA), which will enter into force in 2021, has been called the most influential legislative reform in the Netherlands since World War II. This article forms the introduction to a special issue devoted to the EPA, in which scholars from various disciplines reflect on the societal and legal ramifications of this new act. The authors introduce the different articles but also offer their perspective on the emergence of this new field of research. Socio-legal research into such a vast new regulatory field benefits from the application of multiple perspectives and different research methods. Conspicuously, the authors of the various articles differ on how to assess the new regulation of Dutch spatial planning. Some are pessimistic, others strike a more optimistic note. In this introduction two more perspectives on the law are offered. The perspective of prefigurative law (Davina Cooper) embodies the more optimistic view, whilst the perspective of outsourced law (Pauline Westerman) sides with the pessimists.

According to the Coalition Agreement 2017-2021, the Dutch government intends to develop policy to prevent religious communities from receiving support from abroad if this support comes from so-called ‘unfree countries’. In the article, the author argues that restrictive measures in this area touch upon the collective freedom of religion, which is protected by the ECHR, measures that can only be justified under strict conditions in the light of religious freedom as guaranteed in article 9 ECHR.

The maxim ‘law in books and law in action’ relays an implicit dichotomy, and though the constitutive nature of law is nowadays commonly professed, the reflex remains to use law in books as an autonomous starting point. Law however, it is argued in this article, has a storyline that commences before its institutional formalisation. Law as ‘a continuous process of becoming’ encompasses both law in books and law in action, and law in action encompasses timelines both before and after the formal coming about of law. To fully understand law, it is necessary to understand the entire storyline of law. Qualitative studies in law and society are well equipped to offer valuable insights on the facets of law outside the books. The insights are not additional to doctrinal understanding, but part and parcel of it. To illustrate this, an ethnographic case study of local bylaws regulating an ethnically diverse public space of everyday life is expanded upon. The case study is used to demonstrate the insights qualitative data yields with regard to the dynamics in which law comes about, and how these dynamics continue for law in action after law has made the books. This particular case study moreover exemplifies how law is one of many truths in the context in which it operates, and how formalised law is reflective of the power constellations that have brought it forth.

It is often claimed in the media and in political and academic debates that more law nurtures more research, which in turn should generate more information. However, the question researchers are left with is: What does this mean for comparative law and its methods? This paper takes the context of European consumer sales law as an example of the web of rules applicable at both European and national level. In this context, the main idea behind this article is that looking at law and research as data to be built upon and used in further analysis can revolutionise the way in which legal research is understood. This is because current research methods in European consumer sales law fall short of systematically analysing the essential weaknesses of the current regulation system. In this contribution, I argue that the volume of regulation in European consumer law is large enough for it to be considered Big Data and analysed in a way that can harness its potential in this respect. I exemplify this claim with a case-study consisting in the setting up of a Convergence Index that maps the converging effect of harmonizing policies adopted by the European legislator in the field of

In an increasingly diversifying society, public space is the quintessential social realm¹x Lofland 1998. where members of that diverse society meet each other. Thus space is shared, whilst norms regarding that space are not always shared. Of rivalling norms, some are codified into formal law, in a process Habermas called juridification. Early Habermas regarded juridification a negative process, ‘colonizing the lifeworld’. Later Habermas argued juridification a viable pillar for conviviality in diversity. The shift in Habermas’ perspective invites the question how law works in action. In this article a frame is offered to scrutinize the working of law in action in public space, by applying the conceptual triad of spatial thinker Lefebvre to understand how law is “produced”. It argues that how law is perceived in action is pivotal to understanding how law works in action. Moreover, it discusses the possible ramifications of the perception of law in action for how the legal system as a whole is perceived.

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• 1 Lofland 1998.

Seeing that the role of opinio juris in the identification of customary international law is essentially contested, this contribution seeks to explain how this concept plays a fruitful role in legal doctrine despite of, or perhaps even due to, this essential contestedness. To that effect the paper adopts a constructivist perspective, primarily drawing from Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Berger & Luckmann’s ideas about institutionalization. In this perspective, contested concepts such as opinio juris are conceived of as multifaceted tools of knowledge production in the hands of members of epistemic communities.

The focus in this article is the ‘criminalisation’ of youth hanging around with the emergence of bans on hanging around. A critical social constructivist approach is used in this study, which draws predominantly on qualitative primary data collected between the late 1980s and 2010s. The article compares indigenous with immigrant youth, which coincides with, respectively, youth in rural communities and youth in urban communities. This study shows that there is discrimination of immigrant youth, which is shaped by several intertwining social phenomena, such as the ‘geography of policing’ – more police in urban areas – familiarity, sharing biographical information (in smaller communities), and the character of the interaction, normalising versus stigmatising. In further research on this topic we have to study (the reaction to) the transgressions of immigrant youth, and compare it with (the reaction to) the transgressions of indigenous youth, which is a blind spot in Dutch criminology.

Triggered by the recent Paris attacks the authors make an attempt to answer the question how liberal democracies can react to religious extremists that respond with violence to utterances they consider to be blasphemous. After a brief historical survey of the reactions to blasphemy in penal law and philosophy, the authors compare blasphemy laws and their relation to the freedom of speech in various European countries. Then they analyse the relevant case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the U.S. Supreme Court. In their conclusion the authors defend the position that liberal democracies should be cautious in order to prevent the principles of liberal democracy from being subverted by self-censorship induced by fear of extremism.

Portret van de op Curaçao geboren diplomaat, koloniaal bestuurder en internationaal jurist Jan Helenus Ferguson (1826-1908) met daarin de nadruk op zijn juridische verdiensten.

Het thema tijdens de najaarsvergadering 2011 van de VGR was ‘Taken/bevoegdheden IGZ en relatie IGZ-andere toezichthouders’. Prof. mr. J.H. Hubben opende met de lezing ‘De IGZ: van stille kracht naar publieke waakhond’. Prof. dr. W.H. van Harten verzorgde een coreferaat. Hubben ging in op het juridisch kader waarbinnen de IGZ opereert, de knelpunten die daarbij optreden en de veranderende rol van de IGZ van ‘silent service’ naar een proactieve handhavingsorganisatie. Van Harten schetste in zijn coreferaat verschillende voorbeelden uit de praktijk. Daarnaast ging hij in op de vraag wat een effectief kwaliteitsbeleid op macroniveau zou zijn.

Bij de IGZ is sprake van een verschuiving in aandacht voor risicovolle situaties naar aandacht voor kwaliteit van zorg in meer algemene zin. Het opsporen van echte risico’s in de gezondheidszorg behoort echter meer tot de taak van de IGZ dan het toezicht op de governance van zorginstellingen in algemene zin of het uitvoeren van een specifieke fusietoets. De oprichting van het Nationaal Kwaliteitsinstituut vormt een extra aanleiding voor een kritische toets van taakuitoefening en gebruik van bevoegdheden door de IGZ, waaronder de praktijk van het verscherpt toezicht en het indienen van klachten bij het tuchtcollege.

An analysis of about 2,200 cases of homicides in the Netherlands committed between 1992 and 2006 shows that lethal violence typically results from conflict in symmetric relations in which social rank is ambiguous. The settings of homicides are mostly well-integrated, small communities, including families, rural villages in tribal and agrarian societies, modern urban neighbourhoods, gettos, criminal organisations, and ethnic enclaves. The mechanism that drives antagonism between people in such places is their attachment, close-knit structure, and common features. Earlier, Simmel developed this insight in lethal conflict when saying ‘the more we have in common with another as whole persons, the more easily will our totality be involved in every single relationship to that person, hence the disproportionate violence to which normally well-controlled people can be moved within their relations to those closest to them.’ Contemporary sociologists, ethnographers, and historians amply corroborated this view of lethal violence. In his comparative work Gould shows a compelling connection between ambiguity of social rank and lethal conflict. Knauft investigated the high homicide rates in a New Guinea community and found that lethal violence resulting from sorcery attributions is not the anti-thesis of the ideal of ‘good company’ but its ultimate culmination.

De betekenis van rechtsvergelijkend onderzoek voor de wetgevingspraktijk lijkt toe te nemen. Dat ligt aan het besef dat ook in andere lidstaten dezelfde vragen met betrekking tot de interpretatie en omzetting van het Europees recht spelen. Het heeft ook te maken met de noodzaak precies te weten waartoe het EU-recht verplicht indien men, zoals thans doel van het beleid, zeker wil voorkomen dat Nederland meer doet dan Europeesrechtelijk strikt vereist. Rechtsvergelijkend onderzoek mag niet beperkt blijven tot law in books, maar moet ook aantonen hoe het recht in de praktijk in het buitenland werkt.