Hoe was het met de Nederlandse rechtsfilosofie gesteld in de eerste jaren na de bevrijding? In die periode lag binnen de Vereniging voor Wijsbegeerte des Rechts (VWR) het accent op de verhouding tussen recht en gerechtigheid in het licht van het recente verleden. Dit artikel bespreekt interventies van drie actieve VWR-leden in de jaren 1946-1949: C.M.O. van Nispen tot Sevenaer, I. Kisch en G.E. Langemeijer. Gelet op het sterke accent op de relatie tussen recht en moraal in deze periode, is het niet verwonderlijk dat de rechtsfilosofie van Gustav Radbruch destijds binnen de VWR veel bijval kreeg. Wat was Radbruchs invloed op deze drie rechtsfilosofen? Het artikel besluit met een bespreking van de herdenkingsrede die VWR-voorzitter M.P. Vrij in 1949 uitsprak bij het dertigjarig bestaan. Deze rede markeert het eindpunt van vier jaar van intensieve aandacht voor de rechtsfilosofische implicaties van de ervaring van juridisch onrecht.

Introducing the special issue, we point out how the notion of an ‘enemy of all humanity’ challenges the very foundations of international (criminal) law. We also give an overview of the other contributions.

The central question in this article is whether an empirical-legal approach of victimhood and victim rights could offer a sufficient basis for proposals of legal reform of the legal system. In this article, we choose a normative-critical approach and raise some objections to the way in which part of such research is currently taking place in the Netherlands, on the basis of two examples of research in this field, one dealing with compelled apologies as a possible remedy within civil procedural law and the other with the victim’s right to be heard within the criminal legal procedure. In both cases, we argue, the strong focus on the measurable needs of victims can lead to a relatively instrumental view of the legal system. The legal system must then increasingly be tailored to the wishes and needs of victims. Within this legal-empirical, victim-oriented approach, there is little regard for the general normative principles of our present legal system, in which an equal and respectful treatment of each human being as a free and responsible legal subject is a central value. We argue that results of empirical-legal research should not too easily or too quickly be translated into proposals for legal reform, but first become part of a hermeneutical discussion about norms and legal principles, specific to the normative quality of legal science itself.

This article argues that the notion of ‘victim’ primarily refers to the position of the person who, in the course of a (sacred, religious, legal, etc.) procedure, is ritually sacrificed to avert the wrath of the gods or to preserve peace in the community. In early modernity the Latin victima (sacrificial animal) was also used as a reference to Jesus Christ. Christ was seen as the Lamb of God, the innocent sacrificial lamb which, after an unfair trial, was crucified and died for the sins of the world. In the eighteenth century, under influence of the Enlightenment, the victim concept has been secularized and come to refer to every casualty of bad luck, crime, or disaster. Art history, however, offers interesting examples of pictures of mythical figures such as Sisyphus and Prometheus, representing early images of secularized victimhood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the present day, the concept of victimhood is often used to define the position of the injured party in criminal proceedings. In this frame, the injured victim, looking for legal recognition, is juxtaposed against the position of the accused who is characterized as the possible culprit. However, reflection on the history of the victim concept reveals that it primarily refers to the position of the wrongly or falsely accused or condemned in the course of legal (or pseudolegal) proceedings. A state governed by the rule of law (‘rechtsstaat’) can be defined as a legal form of society which does its utmost to avoid the justice system producing its own victims. In this approach, a victim-oriented criminal justice system is fully aware of the need to protect precisely those who are threatened by the power of the state and public opinion because they are in the dock.

This paper shows that Fuller and Arendt converge on a different point than the point Rundle focuses on. What Fuller and Arendt seem to share in their legal thoughts is not so much an interest in the experience of law-as-such (the interaction between responsible agency and law as a complex institution), but rather an interest in the junction of law and injustice. By not sufficiently focusing on the experience of legal injustice, Rundle overlooks an important point of divergence between Arendt and Fuller. In particular, Arendt differs from Fuller in her conviction that ‘injustice in a legal form’ is an integral part of modern legal systems.

This interview with Jeremy Waldron covers three topics. Firstly, we dealt with the methodology debate, that is, the discussion about how to proceed in analyzing the nature of law. Does the question ‘What is law?’ require a descriptive analysis of the concept of law or, rather, a normative exercise in political philosophy? Secondly, we spoke about the role of law in response to historic injustice, especially in relation to the restitution of property rights. On this topic Waldron vindicates the ‘supersession-thesis’, the idea that, due to changed circumstances and the passage of time, historic injustices become superseded. The third section of the interview is devoted to Waldron’s perspective on the citation of foreign law by national judges.