Since 2014, several countries have introduced legislation to criminalize ‘street harassment.’ In France, this criminalization was framed within a feminist perspective, by conceiving of street harassment as the first level of a ‘continuum of violence against women.’ In the Netherlands, on the other hand, proposals to criminalize these behaviors came from right-wing political parties. They framed ordinances as protecting public order and focused on racialized loitering youth as the main problem group. Despite these differences, proponents of penalization in both countries encountered a similar criticism: according to left-wing politicians, feminists, and anti-racist activists, criminalizing street harassment could lead to disproportionate punishment of racialized men from disadvantaged backgrounds. This article argues for a pragmatic ‘sociology of critique’ within the sociology of law, which provides insight into how actors involved in the introduction of regulation develop reflexivity about the risks of legislation, as well as their blind spots.

‘Visualisatie’, gedefinieerd als (een combinatie van) statische beelden, zoals pictogrammen, schematiseringen, datavisualisaties, maar ook animaties, sijpelt steeds meer de juridische praktijk binnen. Voor visualisaties als communicatiemiddel voor wetgeving is nog relatief weinig aandacht. Deze bijdrage onderzoekt hoe visuals kunnen worden ingezet om beter over wetgeving te communiceren en eventueel ook betere wetgeving te maken.

The GGD report states that 99% of the Top 600 juvenile offenders have a lacunar conscience. But what is conscience from a clinical perspective, what type of information does the clinician or rapporteur gather and how is it described? The department of forensic ortho-pedagogy of the University of Amsterdam is developing an instrument with which behavioral scientists can make a descriptive diagnosis of the conscience in a structured manner. For the construction of the instrument the experiential knowledge of Dutch clinical experts in the field of conscience is collected. By means of qualitative research methods, a number of domains and methods were identified that are considered important for the diagnostics of conscience. Based on the current study and state-of-the-art scientific literature, a clinical structured judgment instrument is realized in which the clinician is describing the domains of empathy, self-aware emotions such as shame and guilt, and moral development a form a strength-weakness analysis of the conscience.

In 2020, a coalition against ethnic profiling established a taskforce to handle complaints of people who have experienced ethnic profiling by the Dutch Royal Military Police and/or the Dutch Customs at airports. In this article, 31 complaints that have been received between February 2020 and March 2021 have been analyzed in a qualitative way. The results show that when people with an ethnic stigma are not informed (properly) about why they have been selected, stopped and searched, and treated as suspects instead of false positives, they feel racially profiled, yet take little or no further action in addition to the complaints.

This article deals with the legislative proposal in the Netherlands to criminalise staying (without permission) in an area controlled by a terrorist organisation. The discussion surrounding the proposal is focused, amongst other things, on possible exemptions for journalists and providers of humanitarian assistance. This article analyses the newest version of the proposal in light of the rights to freedom of movement and freedom of expression.

In 2009, Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff, an Austrian anti-Islam activist, made ‘degrading’ statements about the Prophet Muhammad during a lecture. According to the Austrian judges, these statements could not go unpunished. In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in E.S. v. Austria that the conviction by the Austrian judges did not violate Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff’s freedom of expression. In this article, the author critically analyses this ruling of the European Court of Human Rights and takes a closer look at the possible criminalisation of ‘hurting religious feelings’ in Dutch law.

De wettelijke aansprakelijkheidsbepaling onder het EU-voorstel voor een Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence-richtlijn kwalificeert als een voorrangsregel

Legal arrangements rest on behavioural, cognitive, social, and other assumptions regarding their role and function in society and the legal system. The identification and subsequent evaluation of these assumptions is an important task for legal scholarship. In this article, we focus on the identification and categorisation of these assumptions, providing conceptual distinctions and methodological guidance. We distinguish between assumptions about the value(s), norm(s), or interest(s) underlying a legal arrangement, which can be legal or non-legal, and assumptions about the relationship between the legal arrangement and its underlying value(s), norm(s), or interest(s), which can be logical, causal, or contributory. Regarding the identification, we consider explicit references and inference to the best explanation and theory-driven evaluations as possible methods. Inference to the best explanation, we posit, functions as a manner of reconstructing the theory that the person(s) creating a legal arrangement had in mind regarding the place and function of that legal arrangement in society. Given this, we offer a step-by-step approach to reconstructing this theory in use, drawing from theory-driven evaluations and its sources in the social sciences. These distinctions and guidelines can contribute to understanding the context and untangling the complexities involved in identifying the assumptions that underlie legal arrangements.

In this article we introduce the main principles of the Polish dismissal protection regulation. Issues addressed include the underlying principles for the system of dismissal protection, notice periods, justifiable reasons for dismissal, consultation of trade unions and how to remedy unfair or defective dismissals. We also very briefly touch upon dismissal protection of civil servants.

Various of our academic board analysed employment law cases from last year.

On 1 December 2021, just prior to the transposition deadline for Directive (EU) 2019/1937 on the protection of persons who report breaches of Union law (the ‘Whistleblowing Directive’), the Irish Supreme Court delivered a judgment that may have an impact on the Protected Disclosures (Amendment) Bill, the piece of legislation intended to be enacted in order to comply with the Whistleblowing Directive. The judgment noted that, while the Oireachtas (the Irish parliament) had envisaged that most complaints for which whistleblower protection would be sought would concern matters of public interest, the actual definition of ‘protected disclosure’ in the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 (the ‘2014 Act’) extends further than that and can cover complaints in the context of employment which are personal to the reporting person. While Ireland has missed the deadline and has yet to enact the Protected Disclosures (Amendment) Bill, one of the intended amendments has been changed since this judgment was delivered.

National courts must ensure that penalties for non-compliance with administrative obligations are proportionate

Working as a rider for the Deliveroo platform is a professional activity that can be performed as a self-employed worker, the Labour Tribunal of Brussels has decided, which also ruled out the possibility of Deliveroo riders enjoying the fiscally beneficial status available for workers active on electronic platforms of the collaborative economy (or ‘sharing economy’).

De beroepen van Hongarije en Polen tegen Verordening (EU) 2020/2092 van het Europees Parlement en de Raad van 16 december 2020 betreffende een algemeen conditionaliteitsregime ter bescherming van de Uniebegroting zijn door het Hof van Justitie ongegrond verklaard. Dit regime, dat de auteur aanduidt als het nieuwe rechtsstaatmechanisme, heeft hij reeds uitvoerig besproken in NtEr 2021/9-10. In deze bijdrage worden de arresten van het Hof van Justitie geanalyseerd. Ingegaan wordt op de overwegingen van het Hof van Justitie over de rechtsbasis van de verordening, over de vraag of de procedure van artikel 7 VEU niet wordt omzeild en of verschillende bepalingen van de verordening de beginselen van rechtszekerheid en evenredigheid respecteren. Het resultaat van de arresten is dat het rechtsstaatmechanisme nu door de Commissie in werking kan worden gezet. De vraag is in hoeverre een procedure met betrekking tot Hongarije en Polen tot een einde wordt gebracht – zeker in de huidige geopolitieke situatie. Er zijn overigens tekenen dat Polen bereid is maatregelen te nemen om vastgestelde schendingen van de rechtsstaat ongedaan te maken.
HvJ 16 februari 2022, zaak C-156/21, ECLI:EU:C:2022:97 (Hongarije/Europees Parlement en Raad), HvJ 16 februari 2022, zaak C-157/21, ECLI:EU:C:2022:98 (Polen/Europees Parlement en Raad).

The duration of conditional release has changed from one third of the prison sentence to a maximum of two years. One goal of this alteration was to increase credibility and legitimacy of prison sentences. This experimental study focuses on whether the new system improves this as compared to the previous situation. Results show that sentences based on the new system don’t receive higher valuation from Dutch citizens than sentences based on the old system. Therefore, an important reason for the change isn’t supported by our findings. Rather, what remains is a system riddled with objections and possible negative effects for prisoners and society.